Should I Sniff My Nails?

Mark saw a lot of amazing things in Greece: the Acropolis at sunset, an old man beating an entire café at backgammon, water so blue it was blinding. But the only thing he remembered was: “Should I sniff my nails?”

He first learned it from a guy in Athens when he was looking for a bus stop. Excited to practice his Greek, the linguistics PhD student asked a wiry, nervous man outside a café how to get to Syntagma Square.

“Should I sniff my nails?” the wiry man said, then hurried away as if he’d spotted something important.

Mark tried again. He saw a disheveled woman smoking across the street and asked her. Same response.. Then she shrugged, the universal sign for “how should I know?” And that was how Mark figured out what “should I sniff my nails” probably meant.

What he didn’t realize was that Greeks didn’t silently sniff their nails instead of saying the phrase. That was something Mark added himself after returning to the States. His Greek friend, Toula, tried to explain that it was an expression, not a gesture, but he wasn’t listening. For twenty-three years, he had limited himself to saying things like “I don’t know,” “No idea,” or even “Beats me” when he was feeling adventurous. Finally, he had a new and exciting way to be both ignorant and apathetic.

Three days after Mark’s vacation, a fellow PhD student named Josiah approached him in the printer room and asked where the stapler was. Mark sniffed the nails of his right hand and returned to stacking papers. The next day, Mark was not invited to the Conlang Club and did not understand why. He also felt too powerful to care.

“Who’s been leaving mugs in the sink?” his department head asked the next morning. Mark closed his eyes and took a good, long whiff. (It had actually been Mark.)

The real problems began at home.

“What are you getting my mom for her birthday?” asked his fiancée.

Mark sniffed every individual nail of his left hand to buy time.

“You do remember it’s her birthday Saturday, right?”

One hour later, he was speeding down the highway because his fiancée had kicked him out of the house. A cop pulled him over.

“Sir, do you know why I pulled you over?”

Mark, delighted to receive a question for which the gesture seemed tailor-made, raised both hands and sniffed them for ten seconds. He held eye contact with the police officer the entire time.

“Sir, keep your hands where I can see them,” said the officer.

Mark, happy to have his fingers near his nose just in case another opportunity arose, obliged.

“Sir, why did you just sniff your fingers? Are you intoxicated?”

Mark sniffed.

“It’s a stupid thing he learned in Greece,” said his fiancée, who had just pulled up behind them.

Her dad pulled up just behind her. “Mark, what the hell is wrong with you?”

Mark sniffed.

“Do you even want to marry my daughter?” asked her father, as the officer ordered Mark out of the car and cuffed him.

With his hands imprisoned, Mark was finally forced to confront the terrifying inadequacy of the English language.

“Um…” he said.

No one paid his bail that night.