I can explain.

When I was a sophmore in Honors English, my first writing assignment required me to write about my name: what it meant, if I liked it, how I got it, etc. After the teacher, Mrs. Van Brunt, told the class the assignment, a vision lighted on my mind. It was a vision of how I received my name. I imagined my father, the one who chose my name, sitting as an eighth-grader in an English class not unlike the one in which I then sat. Sitting skinny in his seat, elbow on the desk and his head tilted to one side in his hand, he stared off with eyes slightly glazed, his thick dark hair falling across his brow. Just then, a small piece of pocket lint floated into his line of sight and he sat up suddenly in his seat, reached forth his hand with swift reflexes and snatched the piece of lint from the air. As his hand closed tighlty around the tiny ball of cotton a name popped suddenly into his head: Paige. It came as quickly as the lint that interrupted his daydream, but at that moment, my father decided that this name would be the one after which his first daughter would be called. And so my name is Pocket Lint. I am Pocket Lint.

From that day I have thought of my name and therefore of myself as Pocket Lint. I have thought of many other things in my life as being lint. My laughter, my sneeze, my smile, my more peculiar habits--all remind me of lint for one reason or another. Of all the things I consider lint-like, I especially consider my thoughts to be among those things about myself that qualify as lint. They lay quietly, unassumingly for weeks where one might occasionally place their hand during an uncomfortable moment, during a bout of boredom, or during a conversation to mull over and perhaps leave for another day. However, the time must come for the lint to be extracted from its place in the jacket pocket (and yes, these are the kind that live in a jacket pocket, meaning they can be hung up and out of the way for some time before being taken out again.) Whether extracted through the hand of the owner or through the lint-trap that is everyday life and experience to meet some unknown and careless fate in the waste-basket, the lint often finds its way from my pocket out into the world--if only for a brief moment--before being discarded. However, I have come to grow fond of many of these tiny thoughts and consider them to have more worth than a fate dooming them to eventual death and burial in the waste-land of thoughts. So, I present, for my satisfaction and I hope for yours, my pocket lint.