Chicken Fingers

As I've mentioned, at my former job there were a lot of... interesting folks. One was a 60-something, sort of grizzled woman who had worked there for like 40-some years (no joke). People (including her middle-aged daughter, who also worked there) gave her shit all the time - mostly because she was in a position of authority and could be rather gruff. But since I didn't work directly with her, for the most part we got along pretty well.

For a while everyone took their lunch together at these long picnic tables. It ended up that most of the time I'd be sitting directly across from her. And she'd have to comment about whatever it was I was eating, or wasn't eating. Which, you know - I guess women just do. I didn't comment on what she ate, but I'd be almost physically ill when she brought leftover chicken. It wasn't the chicken itself, mind you. I just did not want to see her eat anything with her hands.

She had these fingernails... that (partly due to working with cleaning chemicals) were less like fingernails and more like overgrown nasty toenails. Why she insisted on keeping them long, I don't know. But they were like these yellowish-brown inhuman looking talons. It made me a bit squeemish. So, as you can imagine when she brought leftover fried chicken (or any messy food) it was really... something. The fried breading would get ALL up under her nails (and with the longass nails, that was quite a bit of breading) and if she was feeling rather expressive with her gestures as she talked, you'd better watch out for those chicken fingers. Of course, when finished she'd proceed to dig out whatever collected on the underside of those talons and eat it, or just chomp on the nail itself. Who knows what all was under there!? Dude, gross. But we'd be talking, so I couldn't really look away. I couldn't look away, I tell you! And she'd ask, as crumbs and spit flew out of her mouth and barreled towards my face "You're done eating already?" And I'd quickly, politely excuse myself to retch...

But other than that, nice lady. Really.