Life is a great mystery
By Andrew Smith

My brother and I got to talking over the holidays, and we decided that there are some things in life that just go deeper than you think.

Like belly button lint. Did you ever wonder where that stuff comes from?

As far as I know, belly button lint is part of the universal human experience. That is; everybody has it, and there's no escaping it. It's as common as having a nose. If you've got a belly button, it's got lint in it. At least mine always does.

Don't think that this is a big issue for me. I've spent more time pondering on how to get potatoes out of my shirt collar that I have about belly button lint. I guess I always just assumed that belly buttons get lint in them for the same reason that couches get dustballs under them. Because it's dusty there. And nobody ever cleans under the couch, so it's sort of a natural dustball sanctuary, where dustballs can live out their brief lives wild and free with no fear of women, and their vacuum cleaners.

Sometimes I wish I could say the same.

Anyway, to recap: where it's dusty you have dustballs. Where it's linty you have belly button lint. Or that's what I used to think.

But over the holidays my brother and I got stuck home alone with orders to do a load of laundry. At the last minute Rudy decided to wash the shirt he was wearing too, so he threw that in there with the rest. He had a big gob of blue belly button lint in his belly button, and he pulled it out, just like you'd pull stuffing out of a couch. He held it up and looked at it for a second, and then dropped it on the floor.

We were back at the folks house, and nothin' seemed to be where it used to be. Or maybe I just didn't remember where things used to be very well. Anyway, I couldn't find the soap for the washin' machine. I checked in the closet, in the cupboard, in the pantry, in the other closet.

But when I saw Rudy flip that belly button lint on the floor I stopped everything right there and made him pick it up. "Look!" I exclaimed. "You've got blue belly button lint!" It was blue/grey to be exact. And that started me thinking, because my belly button lint is blue/grey too. I mean it's always blue/grey. If I'm wearing a red shirt, I get blue/grey belly button lint. If I'm wearing a green shirt, I get blue/grey belly button lint. And in fact, Rudy, my brother, was wearing a white shirt.

I kept rummaging for the laundry soap, but now I had a mystery to solve.

So, I asked Rudy if he had any blue/grey shirts with him, and he said, "No." I asked him if he'd worn any blue/grey shirts in the last week, and he said, "No." I asked him if he'd worn any blue/grey shirts in the last month, and he said,"No." Then I asked him what color his belly button lint was, and he said, "Always blue/grey."

So we picked up that piece of belly button lint and began to examine it, and to question what it really was made of. I'd always figured that the lint in belly button lint came from whatever shirt I was wearing. But now that notion fell apart, because belly button lint is always blue/grey, and most of my shirts aren't.

"Well, maybe it's just moldy," said Rudy. And that sounded logical enough, so we smelled that little wad of belly button lint, to see if it weren't just a tad stale. But it smelt, maybe not fresh as a daisy, but certainly not stale enough to be blue. So we had to rule that out.

And it didn't look moldy either. I mean, this was grade A, fine belly button lint here. It had good texture, fine nap, healthy fibers. If you had enough of it you could knit a fine sweater. It didn't look like cotton. Nor polyester, either.

I looked under the kitchen sink for the soap. There was none. Over the refrigerator. There was none. On the shelves by the steps. There just wasn't any.

Then I asked Rudy about how often he got a wad of belly button lint like that, and he said, "most every day." Which is just like me again. Every time I take a shower, which is several times a week, at least, I get a big plug of belly button lint from my navel.

I always figured that it was coming from my shirts, but I suddenly realized that was impossible. If all that belly button lint was coming from my shirts, I wouldn't have any shirts left. In fact, with all the belly button lint I collect, I could be knitting shirts. I mean I could stuff mattresses with it. I am a veritable belly button lint factory. And I suspect that most people are, too. It's just a side of life no one wants to talk about.

Finally, I found a box of laundry soap out in the kitchen. "How much of this do I put in, Rudy?" He didn't know either, but since it was a small box, we dumped it all in. Better safe than sorry. Then we set the clothes to washin'.

That done, we went out in the kitchen, and sat at the table, and flicked that little wad of mysterious belly button lint back and forth. It was a mystery all right, but it wasn't one we could solve, so we were content to just let it be. There was a football game on in only half an hour.

Rudy picked up the empty box of laundry soap off the table and gave me a strange look. "Is this the soap we, uh, you, used?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said. "Why?"

"Because it says 'Instant Mashed Potatoes,'" he said. "That's why." And when he set the box back down you could see that it was potatoes, plain as day, though if you squinted it could also be laundry soap.
"Oh," I said.

"My wife will kill you," he said.

"She won't have to," I said. "I have a wife of my own."

Then he flicked that wad of belly button lint at me from across the table, and I caught it in mid-air. And I sat there and looked at it, blue/grey, and slightly iridescent and enigmatic. And I knew that life was a very great mystery indeed.