Goodness, Gracious, Great Balls!

Ha! Caught ya! Y'all thought this was gonna be a salacious-type article, didn't you?

Actually, we're not going to talk about balls of any type today. Not footballs, basketballs, soccer balls, male "between the legs" balls, none of them. Absolutely none of them. Instead, we're going to talk about something far more important. Hugely important. Infinitely important. Y'all want to know the subject of today's "balls-hinting about" epistle?

Hmmm, I hear no clamoring. No screams of, "Yes Ed, tell us the subject of today's article/column!" But, despite my profound disappointment over that, I'll press ahead anyway, literary trouper that I am. Yes, today we're going to talk about balls, yes indeed, we're going to talk about great balls, great big balls of.......

Lint.

That's right, lint. And great big balls of it, too. And didn't I just mention that?

Never mind.

It hit me yesterday when I took off my sweatpants and sweatshirt just after cutting le grass. I was about to shower, had just taken off my sweatpants and removed my sweatshirt, when I noticed "it."

"It" was the great ball - of lint. In my belly button, no less.

I noted it simply because I happened to be standing right in front of the mirror on a vanity as I was disrobing. Typically, I don't watch myself undress, in fact, as I age even more rapidly I find myself much less desirous of a look-see at me, it's kinda like the passengers on the Titanic must have felt. They knew at some point that they were sinking, but did they actually want to look over the rail and watch the ship go down? That kinda thing.

Anyway, look at me I did, and only because I dropped my sweatshirt on said vanity, and when I did I took a glanceth and saw it - a ball of lint. A great big ball of lint. Right in the epicenter of my belly button.

It was maybe a quarter of an inch wide through its middle, and the only reason I noticed it was that I saw this small gray spot right in the middle of where there should only be belly button darkness. So, once ocular-ly enjoined, I then looked at it a bit more inquisitively, cause as you get older all kinds of potential illnesses and problems can potentially occur to ones self, so I thought maybe I'd caught some kind of weird Asian disease that manifests itself in grayness of the middle part of one's belly button. But, thankfully, that was not the case. So, in order to quickly remedy my problem I peered directly into my waist-level dent, saw the lint, then reached right in and away it went...

...into my hand. Then, I did the environmentally correct thing and deposited it into a nearby trash receptacle.

Now, there are those of y'all out there, those of you who I count amongst my closest Gather friends, that are probably asking yourselves this question - why in the hell is Ed writing about a piece of belly button lint, for God's sake? Does he even think we'd want to read about some dust lodged in his belly's cave? Maybe the question in your minds has a bit more earthy language to it than even that!

Well, it's a fair question. I'm actually writing this because Johnice dared me to do it. She wanted to see if I could make belly button lint compelling reading, and she is gonna reward me for doing this. And no, I won't tell y'all what my reward will be because my mama raised a Southern gentleman. At least some days. So there y'all have it, pure and simple, why a story about balls, lint, and Johnice and stuff came together here today. And no, I'm not claiming that I made a piece of belly button lint compelling reading, but I apparently did make it something that YOU'RE sitting there reading....