When in 1999 DOC issued the new policy that restricted our hair length, that policy also dictated the length of our nails.

I have always kept short nails because I like to work with my hands and long nails are not practical. From watching my friends and their nail care, I don't think I have the patience and artistry required to maintain long nails either. All that work! No wonder people have breakdowns over breaking a nail. Long nails are a major time and financial investment. So when the memo started talking about nails, I left off reading--that didn't pertain to me.

It therefore came as quite a shock when, during a nail and hair inspection, I was told to cut my nails. I have short nails, what would I cut off without cutting into the nail bed? I tried to talk with the inspecting officer to figure out what he was seeing but he had several hundred heads and pairs of hands to examine. And every other person was arguing with him. Understandably, he was in no mood to discuss my nails.

Like a child lost at the mall, I wandered around trying to figure out what to do next. I had about an hour before I had to return for a second inspection of my hands. If I failed inspection, I would get a charge for non-compliance. Refusal to comply would put me in segregation. I really wanted to comply, I just couldn't figure how I could make my nails shorter.

My problem I discovered is in the design of my hands, or more specifically the design of my nails. I have long slender fingers and very short--stumpy--square nail beds. I can have a full 1 /8th of an inch (I've measured it) of white nail showing and the nail still does not protrude past my fingertip. In other words, from the topside of my hands, because the nail bed is so short, even a 16th of an inch of white nail looks moderately long. Touching the ends of my fingers or looking at my hands palms up, it is immediately obvious, that my nails are not over the tips of my fingers.

Once this design flaw was pointed out to me, it was so clear and obvious I thought my problems were solved. I would demonstrate my short nails and all would be well. What I failed to take into consideration is that in a bureaucracy there is no room for non-standard shapes and sizes. For the first time in my life, I understood with great clarity the frustrations of people who have truly serious dilemmas because their brains or bodies are non-standard.

You may be brilliant but if you can't take the test in the format required, forget it. You may understand and see with great wisdom and insight, but if your answers aren't options on the test, you fail.

If you're not tall enough or too wide, or your speech is different or your face is startling--if you don't fit within a certain package of health, age, appearance or functioning--you are tossed to the sidelines. Or someone very condescendingly includes you and then congratulates themselves on their liberalism and inclusiveness.

In spite of "expert testimony" from a manicurist, I could not get my nails approved until I demonstrated by cutting one down almost to the quick that my nails were indeed policy short. Fortunately, I haven't ever had that small problem again. But I never forgot the lesson.

I must be humble and grateful for the ways I do fit the norm, the social standard, easily. It is tough to be penalized for conditions (mental or physical) that make a person nonstandard. While we all have to conform in some degree or another, let us never forget we are not uniform. Therein may lie our secret and under utilized strength. (Elizabeth Haysom, Fluvanna Review, May 12, 2005)

Elizabeth Haysom is presently incarcerated at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women in Troy, Virginia. This column is one of a series, published under the general heading 'Glimpses from Inside.'