FINGERNAILS
It is time to cut my fingernails again and to trim my beard. Both of them keep growing inexorably. My beard is a nuisance, but my fingernails make me think. Every time I run across a reference to the movement of tectonic plates, the strange floating of the continents as they shift on the outer crust of an inner molten ball at the center of the earth, mention is made that the Atlantic Ocean is splitting and that Europe and North America are moving away from each other at about the same rate as my fingernails are growing, about 4 centimeters a year which is about a couple of inches.
While 2 inches a year doesn’t seem like much (1.5 degrees Celsius doesn’t either and suddenly the earth is steaming), it seems that my fingernails are always needing cutting, they seem to be growing pretty rapidly which makes me feel that the continents are actually moving really fast.
So whenever I see that my fingernails are beginning to be long enough to make clicking sounds on the computer keys I think of the Atlantic Ocean slowly opening up and the continents slowly drifting until they will all be one huge mass as Pangea was so long ago.
I don’t know what other people are thinking when their fingernails get too long. Young women like long fingernails and like painting them. But I don’t. And the idea of the continents slowly floating around, as quickly as my fingernails are growing, is kind of unnerving.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 
Dear Bill,
I once told my Dad to his surprise that I cut my fingernails every two week on Friday. I, too, notice on the keyboard when the nails hit the key above they need cutting.
I hope the Parkers made it back to Missouri!
Warmly,
Kathy