last night, while listening to P.Y.T. by michael jackson and sweating blood over my craptastic writing, i reached for a tub of lip spooj. i have a tendency to chew on my lips when thinking really hard, leaving my mouth dry and cracky and wholly unkissable.

so i groped about my desk looking for some sort of luscious lip emollient. the only thing i turned up was an old skool tube of chapstick. the chapstick flavored kind of chapstick. you know the kind that i’m talking about in the black tube, that smells like nothing but chapstick, and tastes like nothing but chapstick. it’s just so uniquely chapsticky.

as i softened up my pucker with that tube of lip balm, i didn’t even question how old it was. because i didn’t really want to think of it being something i got back in 3rd grade when i could con my make-up hating dad into buying it for me because it wasn’t pink or glittery or smelled like bubble gum or was made by bonnebell or had a name like lip smackers. chapstick in the black tube was purely for medicinal purposes and even my dad could see that.