Story Time: Chapstick

Imagine this:

A serene campground. People milling about, setting up tents, arranging sleeping bags. A few might even be preparing food and fire. All in all, it's quiet and peaceful. The next thing you know, two girls have bolted out of their tent, screaming, and are running for the bathroom.

Your first thought might be "they must've seen a spider," or "how did a lizard get into the tent?" or even
".... adverse reaction to LSD?" There are, of course, many theories as to why 2 girls would scream and bolt out of a tent, but I'll tell you the truth. I believe in disregarding the incrimination and mockery that's surely short to follow.

I sat with my friend, Anna, in our tent. The topic of conversation ranged from our mad desire for cherry Capri Sun juice pouches to the age-old tradition of crushes. Eventually, the topic strayed into some of the wackier things we'd done. I, planning on out-doing Anna, explained of an instance where I ate chapstick. I was embellishing the story a bit; I didn't actually EAT chapstick. I licked it. And to be honest, I think it wasn't so much chapstick as it was candy masquerading as chapstick (it wasn't your generic brand of chapstick.) Nevertheless, I pressed foreword, explaining how it tasted awesome and it didn't gross me out. Also not to be outdone, Anna declared that she too had eaten chapstick before. I called her out on her bluff; only I was crazy enough to eat chapstick, but she insisted that she had. Furthermore, she described eating chapstick, agreeing with me the entire way.

"Well, if you like eating chapstick, why don't we eat some now?" I challenged.

"That's fine, I've actually got a couple Smuckers sticks around here somewhere…" said Anna, delving into her backpack to find the Smuckers. Shortly emerging, she handed me a Cinnamon Vanilla chapstick and kept a Strawberry for herself. We looked at each other and nodded, rolling up each chapstick to its full height.

I can still feel the sensation of biting into the banana-like flesh of the chapstick. Except if it was a banana, it would have to be the most unripe banana ever grown on this green-and-blue earth because biting into chapstick is the farthest thing from biting into refreshing, tropical fruit. Chapstick is grainy and clumpy, meaning it didn't just glide down my throat, it clumped in my teeth and under my tongue. The texture is almost as unnerving as eating raw eel, only raw eel tastes marginally better. I was, in fact, not eating the essence of a Cinnamon Vanilla bun, but was eating the essence of a Mithril blade. It burned my throat with the burn of a thousand evils. With complete disregard to social norms, I spluttered,spat and sprinted  my way to the bathroom to wash my mouth out with soap. Anna followed quickly. After rinsing what must be Hell's 'ambrosia' out of our mouths, Anna and I looked at each other and knew what the other was thinking.

Generally, women are able to look at each other and just KNOW what the other is thinking. It's how we communicate with each other when cute boys are in the room and we'd like to discuss them. But I'm pretty sure that, no matter the gender, should someone have walked in and seen our shared look, they would have known that we did something stupid and repetition wouldn't be given a moment's thought.