GEORGETOWN, DE—Local resident, Tim Cherry, 33, found himself in a state of insurmountable doubt and confusion on Tuesday as he was sitting down to watch a movie with friends.
The mustachioed electrician unconsciously licked his lips as he settled into his couch with a bowl of popcorn and a beverage in hand. He was reportedly unnerved by what he tasted from this seemingly innocuous motion of his tongue. He explained, "So then I just sort of tasted it out of nowhere. It was sweet and a little tangy. It was definitely ketchup."
Although bearers of the iconic lip hair are burdened with the need to more thoroughly assess the contents of their whiskers, and occasionally find a stray crumb or drop of sauce therein, what is especially strange about Mr. Cherry's case is that he could not recall having consumed any foods with ketchup in the recent past.
"It was like the world stopped making sense in that moment," shared the amateur stamp collector. "My first thought was that I just didn't remember eating ketchup recently, but as the opening credits finished, I just kept going through my last few meals, and I knew that none of them had ketchup."
Cherry reported that he licked his mustache clean, and had no doubt that the substance was ketchup. He then spent the duration of the movie poring over everywhere he had been since his shower at approximately 8:10 a.m. that day. "I figured that my lip had to be clean from the shower, right? So that served as my backward anchor."
At one point, approximately 30 minutes into the movie, Cherry excused himself to the kitchen and began sifting through his refrigerator. Finding no leftovers or obvious clues that shed light on the substance's origins, he then began sifting through his kitchen trash can, again to no avail.
"I thought I must be losing my mind!" related the aquarium owner. "I kept going through every single possibility. 'Could I have had ketchup on my toothbrush? Could I have wiped it on my mustache after I had in on my hand?' But where did I get it on my hand?"
At the movie's end, Cherry's present friends found him in the kitchen in the fetal position, mumbling incoherently to himself. After approximately 20 minutes of gentle coaxing, they were able to return him to the couch where he told them of the facial-hair-with-ketchup mystery.
"At first, I thought this was some kind of weird joke," shared Gemma Borden, 26, who was present at the time. "But he looked like he had lost his [expletive]. I was seriously concerned for his sanity."
Cherry's friends remained with him until they felt that it was safe to leave. They waited for his girlfriend, Haley McPherson, 30, to be with him, who was at her place of employment during the movie gathering. She also had no explanation for the ketchup taste in her boyfriend-of-2-years's facial hair, aside from commenting that, "sometimes senses play tricks on us. Maybe some of the flavoring on the popcorn seemed like ketchup or something."
Cherry, overhearing her comment, immediately and vehemently protested, "Don't tell me what I tasted, Haley! You weren't there! You're not inside my head!"
As of press time, the mystery remains unsolved, but Mr. Cherry has scheduled an appointment with a neurologist to test for tumors or unusual brain activitiy.