They thirst for Nathan’s blood

I suppose it’s a natural corollary to my lifestyle that deadly shards of glass litter my floor on a regular basis. The good news is that I’ve never stepped on one barefoot. The bad news is that Nathan has never not stepped on one barefoot. It’s almost as if each one has a tiny embedded GPS transceiver, and the moment Nathan takes off his sandals he straps a satellite dish to his back and goes hunting.

It’s not like I don’t clean up the glass when it breaks – sometimes I even use the broom. Last week, when a jar of marionberry jam tumbled from the door of the fridge in slow motion as I watched, horrified, I even had the sense of mind to pick up the mostly intact jar and transfer its delicious, gooey contents to Tupperware. I gave the floor a pretty thorough once-over with paper towels and whatnot, but neglected to sweep. Indeed, why should I bother when the soles of Nathan’s feet do such a better job with the cleanup? In the week following the jam incident, as it’s become known around the apartment, Nathan stepped on not one, but two slivers of glass that sank into his foot – all the way to the soul, to hear him talk about it. He gushed blood for a while, but on the other hand, no permanent damage was done and our kitchen was one glass shard cleaner than before. Two glass shards cleaner than before! You can’t argue with math. Math always wins.

At the enchilada extravaganza on Thursday, Naomi was sitting on the outdoor couch and tipped a martini glass, long since drained of its margarita payload, off the coffee table and onto the cement where it shattered as only ridiculously ornamental glassware can. Again I cleaned up the mess, and again, the very next day, Nathan managed to plunge a dagger of ex-martini glass into the ball of his foot. When he told me, I just kind of shrugged, as if to say, “you should have known better this time.”

The one time Nathan broke something, a porcelain cereal bowl last year, the shards found his soft spots, not mine. Like always.

I’d argue for more sweeping, but the fact remains that if karma decrees you’ll end up with glass in your foot, you’re going to get glass in your foot. You can sweep until you score the linoleum, but in the end, the glass sliver with your name on it, lurking like a tiny viper under the fridge, will still remain. Those things want Nathan, and they’re going to get him one way or another.

The obvious solution isn’t as conventional, but I think it’s viable if not humane. We just need to hire someone with especially large feet and pay them to pace the apartment day and night. It would have to be someone from the third world who didn’t know any better so we could pay them slave wages, ideally by the shard. I think a dollar for each shard they removed from their feet would be reasonable. That’s like, a burger. Two on Wednesdays.