text: You hear this one a lot: “The definition of insanity is to repeat the same thing over and over again and expect different results.” That isn’t true. No, that’s not insanity. I had a friend once. We’ll call him Jason. Sure, Jason. One thing you need to know about Jason is that he was a chronic nail-biter. He was the type of kid who you rarely saw without his hand up to his mouth, chewing. Just gnawing on the tough protein covering his fingers. I remember when we were very young his mother would paint his nails with clear Thum nailbiting polish that would leave a peppery and bitter taste in his mouth. But Jason didn’t care. He’d grit and bite the polish right off. He just did not care. His poor mother put that polish on his nails every single day, but he outlasted her. She eventually stopped once she realized Jason was starting to actually like the taste. They were perpetually moist, his fingers. Jason near constantly bit his nails. He bit them right down to the epidermis and until his teeth couldn’t get a grip on the nail itself, or until it bled. It wasn’t a nervous thing, it was just a Jason thing. When you first got to know Jason you’d politely ignore it but eventually you’d get annoyed and disgusted. Then you learned to ignore it. Jason wasn’t your average nail-biter, though. This kid never, not even once, spit out a chewed up keratin remnant on the ground. He told me the habit was disgusting enough, and he didn’t need to ramp it up by spitting nail all over the carpet. So he pocketed them. Each one. He’d chew and gnaw and bite and peel and once he had shaved off just enough of the nail to tear it off, he’d put it in his pocket. Aside from this admittedly common habit, Jason was by and large average. We played sports together, soccer league. My mom would babysit him after school sometimes. He liked his sandwiches cut diagonally. One time I went over Jason’s house to spend the night. Your nails grow at an average of 3 millimeters a month. They’re a form of hair, not many people know that. That’s why when you file your nails, that unmistakable smell pierces your nose, crinkling the minuscule hairs deep inside your nasal cavity. The speed in which they grow all depends on the length of the terminal phalange, so your index finger grows the quickest. In the summer, your nails grow faster. It’s true. Every young kid has been in a situation where their friend falls asleep first at a sleepover and they don’t know what to do with themselves. On foreign territory, you’re on your own to either entertain yourself quietly or force yourself to fall asleep. On this night at Jason’s house, that kid was me. Jason was sound asleep on his bed and I was on the floor next to him in a sleeping bag, wide awake. Bored out of my mind and doing anything to keep myself occupied before I got sleepy, I start feeling around the darkness of underneath his bed. It was very dark and I could only make out darker blobs of some number of objects tucked away under the safety of his mattress. To get a better reach, I turn myself on my stomach and turn my head flush against the carpet, unable to see what I was grabbing at now. Jason wasn’t your average nail-biter. I reached my arm further under the bed and wrapped my fingers around what was surely some sort of glass jar. Still on my stomach with my head turned to the side, I slowly moved my hand up the jar’s opening. A mass of something cold and wet my fingers feel. Like tiny, wet wood chips. Like chewed up sunflower seeds. Like chewed up nails. I jerk my hand back, moving my head back in position to see under his bed. Still, the darkness shrouds the jar I was feeling at. I get on my chest again and use my middle finger to delicately roll the jar out from under the bed and into plain sight. As I rolled it closer, the contents of the jar were clear. An entire jelly jar’s worth of chewed up and spit out, *and pocketed*, nail fragments lined the inside of the glass. Half moon crescents of nail stuck to the inside walls of the jar, stained purple from scraped out Smucker’s grape jelly. Without a lid, a mass of chewed nail clippings was near dribbling out the exit of the jar, moist with saliva. Pocket lint was scattered throughout the mess. The smell is a thing difficult to describe but for fans of black licorice I’ll spare you the thought. I look under the bed once more, seeing three, four, maybe even five more dark cylinders. More jars. More jars full of nails. I reach under again and touch glass. This jar wasn’t as full as the last. A new collection. Gagging on the smell and desperate to hide my intrusion I roll both jars back to their original resting place. A wet glob of nails knocked loose by my jostling of the jars just lay on the carpet, moistening the plastic fibers. The lump of finger protein almost seemed to be taking the form of the original contents of the glass jar. I dig the side of my palm into the carpet and grit my teeth, scraping part of Jason’s nail collection back under the bed. The side of my palm now wet from the spit that covered the nail shavings, I wipe it on a dry section of carpet. Making every effort going to sleep, I feel like I’m laying on a bed of nails. No pun intended. You do any one thing enough times, over and over again, it begins to become ritual. More than ritual, even. It starts to become who you are. Doesn’t matter what it is. Washing your hands obsessively. Making sure every straight edge is aligned perfectly. Cracking your knuckles repeatedly. Biting your nails. Storing them in jars. Over and over. Over and over. Never expecting a different result--but enjoying the power of knowing it. That’s insane.