I’m not a chapstick kind of guy. I don’t compulsively layer my lips with a soothing aloe balm or a cheery cherry flavor. You won’t find half empty containers of Burt’s Bees Beeswax Lip Balm Lip Gloss lying around my home. The total expenditure on chapstick in my life is right at $0.00, and although it may multiply many times over, it will never increase.

Because I’m just not a chapstick kind of guy.

But this generally leaves me in a bit of a quandary at the start of winter each year. Because, you see, my lips get really chap. Chapped? Whatever, they get all dry and crusty. Luckily, I only make out with girls in the summer, so it hasn’t hindered my social calendar in any way. But it’s kind of annoying, and for about two weeks each year my lips first begin to hurt, then crack, then get really red (like your face does when you’ve been out in the cold for too long). It’s kind of embarrassing, but I weather through it every year. Not because I’m necessarily tough or manly or anything like that, mostly because I’m just not a chapstick kind of guy.

I felt the onset of my chapped lips this past week. I awoke one morning last week to the pain of dried lips (and years of loneliness), and I knew that the season was upon me. It’s like people with arthritis telling you when the rain is coming. My lips predict the start of winter.

I waited as long as I could after I got to the office before I went to inspect, and they’d already gotten pretty bad in the few short hours I had been at work that day. I have this obsession with checking out flaws in my otherwise perfect visage. I obsess about them. I generally don’t like looking at myself very much, in fact I generally avoid it at all costs, but give me a flaw and I can’t get enough. Cracked lips. A twitching eye (when I don’t get enough sleep, which is pretty common, my right eye spasms and has this cool twitching thing it does). A cut forehead (I run into things a lot).

And then, while standing there staring at my cracked lips, I decided something. Something crazy. Something I’d never done before.

I was going to find some chapstick.

That line probably would have been a lot more shocking if I wouldn’t have titled this entry the way I had, but believe me, it was still pretty shocking.

So, now that I’d made my momentous decision, I needed to find some chapstick. I couldn’t do anything wild like walk to the gas station down the street and pick some up. That’s too simple. Too everyday. I needed to find my chapstick from alternative sources, and I had just the one.

A friend had invited me up to his parents for the weekend, and he just happened to be one of those compulsive chapstickers that I mentioned earlier. The guy was constantly asking his wife where the chapstick was, and just like my parents have a pack of smokes tucked away in every nook and cranny of their home, you can find chapstick almost anywhere at my friend’s house. He was my ticket into this crazy world of preventative care for the lips. He was going to be my supplier, and for a weekend, I was going to be a junkie.

I was ready to take the dive. I was even ready to buy my own chapstick, on the off chance he had forgotten his (the wife wasn’t coming along on our trip). I was ready for any direction the road to chapstick would bring me in, even if it was a gas station in Smalltown, Wisconsin (vacation gas stations are different than home gas stations, you’re allowed to get away with more).

As it turns out, I needn’t have worried about odd gas station purchases or my friend’s forgetfulness. Neither one mattered. Because his mother keeps a stock of chapstick at her house, a stock we were allowed to take from freely. I acquired three sticks, which will more than likely last me into my eighties. I fought dried lips (Chap lips? Chapped lips?), and I won. I’ve been healed, at least for this year.

Hallelujah.