Christie Mastric

It’s easy to get lost in life’s minutiae, especially in your advancing years.

Recently, I was listening to an interesting talk at the Peter White Public Library. While I was engrossed in the subject matter (nature), one small thing distracted my attention for a while.

It was a ragged pointer finger nail on my right hand.

The nail didn’t affect any of my motor functions or cause any sort of pain, but it was enough to make me fixate on it.

I asked myself a few questions. Do I wait to get home to trim it? Or do I take a chance and use my fingers or — even worse, my teeth — to pull it off? This comes with a great risk. What if I accidentally pull the nail too far down the side? Even if blood doesn’t well up, a nail cut too sharply can be very painful for days.

Hangnails present the same problem, and I haven’t quite found a way to deal with them. Basic clippers seem to be the best solution, but they are not always handy.

So, you ask, how did you handle the ragged nail issue? A quick but carefully executed nibble with mouth and it was gone.

I must admit, though, it doesn’t always end that way. Often an ill-advised rip ends up with a throbbing thumb for days.

What concerns me more sometimes is my misinterpreting of phrases due to increasing senility and diminishing eyesight.

I saw a small story somewhere on social media where someone mentioned what I first thought was “beans in landfills.” What’s the problem with beans in landfills? Are people worried about gulls eating too many beans and causing olfactory problems for the avian world? Do the beans sprout more bean plants and take over? Or do some magic beans sprout and lead to a giant vine into the sky?

Not to worry. The actual phrase was “bears in landfills.” I guess that was a thing in some parts of the Upper Peninsula at one time until someone decided it wasn’t good for the bears or maybe the people watching them.

As far as I know, it’s still OK to put beans in your trash.

However, I must watch what I do more and more. As I am writing this at home, I am sipping sparkling water from a glass tumbler. Next to it is a glass balsam-and-cedar-scented candle in a class container of similar size.

It would be easy to be lost at what I’m writing at my computer, and then mistakenly reach out for a sip of water and find out too late that I reached for the wrong item, getting a mouthful of hot paraffin by accident.

Fortunately, the flickering flame is a clue and I am saved from myself.

Sometimes, though, I am on my own when it comes to my welfare.

Getting on an elevator is simple enough. It’s once I’m inside that can cause a problem.

I could stand there and wait for the door to do its thing after I’ve pressed the button for the floor where I want to be, or I can put destiny in my hands by then pressing the “close door” button. But then my mind stalls: What do the arrows mean on the “close door” and “open door” buttons?

I most always pick the right button. The fact that I draw a momentary mental blank concerns me. Arrows pointed inward mean “close,” and arrows pointed outward mean “open,” right? At least that’s how I see it.

Lately, I’ve been taking to creating new words on the fly, and accidentally. A few days ago, I called someone “intuitious.” The correct word, I believe, would have been “intuitive.” Some years back, I made up the word “galliant,” a cross between “gallant” and “valiant.” I have yet to use it, though, in daily conversation.

It’s not a big deal.

I try not to get too worried about these mental mishaps. After all, they’re just minutiae. I can try to save my consternation over the bigger things in life, such as kicking away those hard chunks of ice that scape against my tires in the winter. I call them car goobers.

They’re much more worthy of me losing sleep.