Lip Balm Everywhere You Go
Salvation's Found in Lip Service
Took me a while but I’ve now added it all up, K. I can now so plainly see why you kept asking those incessant questions about whether I wore necklaces. I finally pieced it together this afternoon as I was digging through my backpack to find my misplaced stick of lip balm. All of a sudden, I flashed back to you sitting innocently behind your desk as you pulled out your lipstick every time you’d ask me that inane question, adding emphasis by endlessly dotting and smacking while you patiently waited for my puzzled look to fade.
I’ve got only one simple retort, K. “Function over form.” No one’s trying to win any beauty contests out here in the wild. Especially yours truly. It all boils down to making the world a better, easier, more hospitable place to travel. And that all starts with pampering your lips a little.
Of all people.
But before I go any further and start in with a few quips of my own about how that oughta extend to your getup too, and how you need to complete your look this weekend by slinging an “Aqua Net-lace” around your neck to keep that 1984 Madonna doo standing tall all day long as you can scamper up the Moon Goddess Arete in high fashion, you can stop with any more sideways references to my ingenious, incredibly fashionable, and utterly indestructible lip balm necklaces.
Here it is, K. Sorry to keep you waiting so long.
*****
Tracking
MISSION: J35781-2025H
DCN: 7390218
TDY: CAPITOL REEF NATIONAL PARK, UTAH
DATE: 2025-09-15
TIME: 2:39 PM (MDT)
TO: ALL FIELD AGENTS
FROM: AGENT J
CC: AGENTS R,W,K,P
SUBJECT: TECHNIQUE MEMO 238 - SPF LIP BALMRelevant Class
SEMINAR: STAYING HEALTHY
INSTRUCTOR: AGENT W
CLASS NO: AWT-111
CLASS: SUN PROTECTIONBackground
Keeping one’s lips in tip-top shape is of the utmost importance. Owning a fully functional pair allows one to successfully form essential sounds of daily life like “oomph” or “oof” and even “ugh” but also of more challenging words like “duh” and complex expressions such as “zip it.” Further, being able to smoothly and effortlessly smack one’s lips in pleasure after eating an utterly delicious meal is an action that lends itself to a tremendous quality of life.
Other uses for lips cannot be simply dismissed as trivial, such as kissing your significant other goodbye, giving your teeth something to play with when bored or puzzled, or enabling you to happily whistle while you work.
Much to this field agent’s surprise, countless discoveries are made every year at the Travel Superlight Agency’s research facilities on additional uses for a set of smackers. One of the most important early findings, a watershed moment in the annals of the TSA, was that a pair of fully functional lips enables one to shield their teeth from the impacts of a fall. This particular field agent would have immensely benefited from the fruits of this research should it have been conducted prior to a notably spectacular childhood crash that kicked off a lifetime habit of getting scrappy out in the woods. Fortunately, this cat had more teeth and lives than a meager set of nine.
Cutting edge research being conducted to this very day will surely uncover even more incredible uses for a set of lips. A whole new universe of possibilities is just waiting to be discovered.
Challenges
Many challenges lie ahead in keeping our collective sets of lips properly maintained. Since most of us tossed away our Operations and Maintenance Manuals ages ago, many may be ignorant as to the best ways to properly take care of them. If one were to stop and take a good look around at the folks sitting right beside them, this may be abundantly clear. Besides the obvious fact that an ill-maintained set of lips won’t always do a great job of covering up a set of bad teeth, it’ll be all too apparent that benign neglect seems to be the default move for the people of most cultures.
Preventative and corrective maintenance measures for a pair of lips are too numerous to list for such a painfully short Technique Memo on a subject that deserve volumes of discussion at length. As such, field agents are encouraged to contact Agent P for a complete rundown of recommended practices. However, due to a high volume and frequency of failures in following even the most basic rules and suggestions, the Travel Superlight Agency has authorized the release of information pertaining to one of the most egregiously overlooked preventative maintenance procedures - proper lubrication.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that field agents often find themselves in compromising situations that expose their lips to unexpectedly harsh conditions. Repeated exposures to sunny situations is often the primary challenge but other typical examples include sitting in the stuffy and dry climes of an airplane, hiking or climbing at altitude, floating out onto water only to get blasted by sneaky winds and high doses of reflected sunlight, maintaining extended conversation with travel companions over super spicy meals, providing guidance to non-native speakers as to how to best tune the finer points of language phonetics, or even discussing the penetrating power of collimated UV rays and the tolls they take back at Academy labs, it’s vitally important to keep the soft puffy tissues of one’s lower face in immaculate shape to hold up to a lifetime of nearly constant use.
The primary challenge in lubing the lips while out on the road is to remember to pack a carefully selected stick of lip balm to have at the ready when needs are suddenly found to be at their greatest. A poor choice in product or keeping it in an inconvenient place (e.g., at the bottom one’s backpack) can be a recipe for disaster as the lip balm will more than likely go unused for long stretches of time.
Ugly and painful outcomes such as chapping, peeling, cracking, splitting, or worse yet, sun blistering may be the tragic end results. Such awful calamities may render a victim helpless in forming properly constructed sentences, asking well timed questions, fully answering inquiries, responding with appropriate facial expressions that coordinate well with current events, or even just blissfully whistling their favorite tunes as they ride off into the sunset.
Observations
Field operatives that’ve failed to use lip balm on a regular basis have faced a wide variety of frightening penalties. World explorers who’ve found themselves wandering into high altitude zones where the air’s been thin and the atmosphere wasn’t as effective at blocking out harmful UV rays have been especially prone to such detrimental effects. A lip balm with a decent Sun Protection Factor (that’s “SPF” for any of you out there that are only just now waking up to our new realities) can help one protect their precious smackers from being marred by extremely harsh and bright conditions.
Exacerbating an already tenuous situation is that the sudden onset of high winds may inflict additional evils on the unsuspecting traveler. Throw in a twitchy tongue or two that may be found wetting out a pair of drying lips in such conditions and you’ve got nothing but trouble ahead. As if that wasn’t all too much to bear, even the slightest of runny noses will often quickly chap up the most hardened sets of nostrils out on the circuit when subjected to such heinous winds. A matching pair of bright red lips and a pair of sensitive nostrils may not have been the souvenirs you’d been hoping to bring back home with you.
When such conditions prevail, regular repeated applications are recommended for all activities, mundane or otherwise. Failing to do so, one may find that even the most relaxing and pleasant outings will become untenable.
For more challenging pursuits, a keen observer will note that adventurers who fail to apply SPF lip balm in difficult environs may come back to civilization sooner than expected. Hence the old adage heard only in the most dire moments of despair: “Those Who Fail to Heed Best Maintenance Practices for Their Lips Shall Not Pass!”
Through many cycles of failed field tests conducted by a multitude of nationalities across the world in a variety of different settings, environments, and climates, it’s long been proven that the simple act of carrying lip balm should not be overlooked. Despite this fact, mistakes are still being made today, even as we speak.
Perhaps the most basic error made is that many field agents think the heavy lifting is done once they’ve packed away their stick of balm after applying it the first time. No. One must frequently take it out for regular reapplications.
Strong deterrents like storing one’s stick at the bottom of their backpack, tucking it away in successive layers of ziplock bags, or worse, leaving it in its original packaging with seals intact, the price tag still visible, and the receipt in the glovebox, have all proven to be extremely detrimental to properly preserving one’s soft tissues. While these poor practices may not ultimately interfere with the ability to hail mission success, a field agent who’s forgotten to properly apply lip balm may pay a steep price back at Headquarters as they struggle to eloquently debrief colleagues who may be thoroughly distracted by disgraceful lips that look like they’ve been through the cheese grater.
Solutions
Fortunately, for the aspiring field agent, a myriad of effective solutions has been queued up to address these perils. The majority of the following recommended practices have been proven to be more than half-baked with time.
First and foremost, selecting a lip balm with a high SPF factor is paramount. The higher the better. Sticks with ratings greater than SPF 30 are hard to find (short of applying the awful heavy white paste of solid zinc oxide), but in this field agent’s experience, anything with a higher rating is typically unnecessary unless the mission involves highly reflective surfaces such as those seen during boating, glacier travel, or high altitude mountaineering activities.
Taste and smell are two other critical factors to keep in mind. Pandering to one’s basic instincts to successfully eat, talk, and breathe, one may find that bits and pieces of salve will part with the lips and enter one’s mouth to make the long perilous journey to the tongue. Licking one’s lips in the process will only accelerate this slow motion car wreck. Grody garnish indeed.
No matter the cause, foul smelling or bad tasting balm will quite simply fall unused. Field agents will find themselves hesitating to reapply poor formulations that fail to meet even the most basic minimum baseline standards for these two crucial metrics.
There are plenty of good choices out on the open market where researchers have spent much valuable time, money, and other resources perfecting flavor and scent profiles. My advice is to take the time to find the one you like so that you’ll want to use it often. Just be sure you find one that’s not too tasty lest you spend all your time applying and licking it off instead of doing what you headed out the door to do in the first place.
Melting point is another commonly overlooked detail that could easily make or break an adventure. Subjecting certain salves to warm temperatures will result in carrying around puddles of useless mush. Seemingly harmless acts like leaving a stick of lip balm sitting out in the sun can lead to sticky situations that are messy to backpedal out of.
It’s recommended that travelers conduct their own carefully controlled experiments back at home, complete with controls, lab journals, timers, witnesses, scientific peer reviews, and the like to find a variety of lip balm that best suits the climate and conditions that they’ll soon be subjected to (our apologies, the results of Agency research on such matters remains highly classified and cannot yet be released to the public).
Once you find a lip balm to your liking, think of a good way to keep it handy. An easy-to-reach stick will be a heavily-used stick. Typically, there’ll be a convenient little pocket on an article of clothing you wear out on assignment to hold small items such as these. Use it.
Another option is to fashion a necklace made of a decent length of nylon string duct taped around a stick of lip balm. Such a work of wonder will complement just about any wardrobe imaginable and would be a wonderful accessory for the red carpets. Wearing such a masterpiece will not only be the subject of much fawning attention, but will also surely lead to such conversation starters like “dude…hold on…before we go an further, we wanna know right now where you got that sweet-ass necklace.”
So go out and try a few. Trust me, finding a fave will miraculously transform all your travels, yielding nothing but remarkable results in keeping your lips soft and supple throughout all your earthly journeys to come.
Index Scores
MASS: 8 - DUDE, YOU'RE LOOKING A LITTLE SKINNY THESE DAYS
VOLUME: 8 - A DROP IN THE BUCKET
UTILITY: 9 - I'M ALL EARS
EFFICIENCY: 7 - IT'S HOWDY DOODY TIME
OVERALL: 8 - IT HAMS MY BISCUITS IS ALL*****
That’s a wrap, K. I’ll check in after some pie. I can smell it from here. Yum! They don’t call it Fruita for nothin.
Wait a minute…I think it’s just this new lip balm I’m smelling. How sad. Doesn’t even taste like pie.
J