I know I mentioned this addiction before and it resides near the top of my list of favorite things. Interestingly enough, just last week the question of the day on Ask.com was whether or not you can truly be addicted to lip balm. All the scientific evidence says no; I beg to differ.
The winter I was eight years old started me on the road to addiction and there's been no turning back...
That winter my lips were chapped. I'm not talking a little chapped. I mean severe chappage, if you will. Swollen, dried, cracked, bloody, burning lumps of mangled flesh. It hurt to talk. Eating was pure misery. Smiling was not possible. Kids at school were ruthless.
I remember my mom gave me some cherry and orange chapstick to combat the problem. No matter how much of that crap I caked on, my lips were still on fire. I needed relief. I needed something to cool the burn.
Somehow I managed to get my hands on the mint variety of chapstick. Ahh... something was different about the mint. It tingled. And cooled the burning sensation. I re-applied it every time it wore off and my lips began to heal. They returned to nomal size. The cracks closed up. The burning stopped. I could eat, smile, laugh...and the kids at school quickly forgot the mess I'd been prior to my mint chapstick revelation.
I vowed to never have a repeat of that episode. My mint chapstick became a routine part of my daily life. Get out of bed in the morning, apply chapstick. Brush teeth, apply chapstick. After a meal, apply chapstick. Heading outside in the winter wind or the summer sun, apply chapstick. Any time my lips feel the slightest bit dry, apply chapstick.
In my teens I graduated to mint blistex. It was much less waxy than the chapstick kind but still had the awesome medicated tingle and cool sensation. And it felt more grown up somehow.
By the time I graduated college and entered the official real world, I once again changed my preferred choice for minty relief. I moved on to Natural Ice. It is smoother and lighter on my lips than blistex. And has SPF 15. And the same cool tingle. It's still my choice today and I have no plans on changing unless they stop making it.
The issue I found through the years with all of the mint sticks is the difficulty in finding them in the stores. I don't know why it is the least popluar flavor and not even carried at all by many drug stores and retailers. In today's internet world it's not as big a deal; I simply order a box online any time my supply is getting low. Okay... two boxes... to qualify for free shipping, of course...
We are smack-dab in the middle of another freezing winter. I encourage everyone to feel the tingle and soothe the burn. Get some mint lip balm. It's good stuff. I'd be miserable without it.
But be careful. Addiction may occur without warning.
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