Lint Sacrifices

Clothes give off lint that collects in little wads, for instance in pockets and the turn-ups of trousers. But I also find it on my body, coloured according to what I’ve been wearing, and mainly at three places. Lint collects at the nape of my neck, in my navel and at the upper end of my bum crack. There is a simple and evident explanation for this: religious mites.

All larger terrestrial animals act as unwitting hosts to innumerable microscopic mites (Sw. kvalster). Most of them are harmless, subsisting on little flakes of shed skin. Some allergics react badly to their excrement, but that is rare.

My mites are obviously organized into tribes, one of which occupies my abdomen. They have a central cult site where they congregate regularly to perform sacrifices, lugging enormous loads of lint from far areas such as my upper chest, celebrating great religious feasts that culminate in the lint being heaved into the Great Sacred Pit -- my navel. The theology behind this sacrifice is unclear, but I suppose the mites want to placate some Higher Being, probably me. The mites are periodically killed in devastating numbers when I shower, so the great offerings may be intended to stop me from doing just that. But I am a vengeful God.

What of the great lint deposits made at the nape of my neck? They most likely have to do with the awe and fear felt by the mite tribe on my neck for the dark and mysterious woodlands of my head. I have no doubt but that the head mites, a small-bodied and furtive race hardened by anti-dandruff shampoo, make nocturnal raids on the neck mites, who therefore live in a constant state of fear. Their lint offerings under the eaves of the Head Woods must thus be to appease the mysterious forces lurking up there in the dark.

More horrific still must be the threat that inspires the mites of my lower back to sacrifice lint at the upper end of the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Poor little ones.

[More blog entries about humour, mites; humor, kvalster.]