Where Moustaches Come From

Not all moustaches are the real deal. Certainly, loads of people can grow hair on their upper lip, but the simple existence of adornment below the nose is not sufficient. Only a few special individuals end up with Moustaches. 

I’m sure, deep down, you know what I’m talking about. For example, the time you walked past a young man sporting some resplendent growth and thought “no, that hair is all wrong.” Or the time you visited your granny with her fluffy upper lip and knew that all was right with the world. She had a Moustache. 

Get your hot chocolate and curl up by the fire. Here is how Moustaches came to be. 

The first Moustache ever to occur was on a Neanderthal. He was a low member of his tribe. On a day just like any other, he was taking a break by a little stream when he felt a little itch on his lip. Nothing else suggested that something special was happening so he stood up, stretched and went home to his cave. When he arrived, the others gave him strange looks. He returned these with fierce stares and growls. Successfully cowed, they averted their eyes. 

In the days that followed, the women of the tribe were particularly amorous towards him. He got into many clashes with the men. He would never have done this before since he was not the alpha. Something had definitely changed. He was filled with unnatural self-confidence.

Then one day he woke to find the whole tribe clustered around him. He snarled in preparation for a fight but they backed away so he relaxed a little. It could still be a trick. Some of the youngsters started pointing at him with one hand and rubbing their upper lip with the other. He reached up to probe at his upper lip but there was only his usual scraggly hair. It made no sense. 

After a while, he realised that they were waiting for him to do something. In that moment he felt like going hunting, so he gathered what he needed. The tribe followed him out. That day was the most successful hunt in living memory and from that point he rose quickly in stature to become the alpha. He did not think much about this meteoric ascension.

It became known that the tribe was following Him Of The Moustache. Other chiefs were jealous of his powers and took to decorating themselves with leaves and berries and mud. All this simply made them look ridiculous. Him Of The Moustache had something intangibly special. His tribe enjoyed a prosperity no other Neanderthal tribe had yet achieved. 

Splendid cave paintings of Him Of The Moustache have recently been discovered. Surprisingly, we have learned that he was not the only one so blessed. Archaeologists and anthropologists have begun to find references to magical Moustaches across all cultures and peoples. Wise ones still meditate on the phenomenon. Mystics and yogis and shamans; witch doctors and gurus and sages all have devoted their lives to understanding the True Moustache. 

My favourite explanation is that we share the world with many invisible spirits. Every now and then, one of them lands on someone who is then blessed with a True Moustache. Through an arcane symbiosis, their life suddenly becomes extraordinarily important. 

What do you think?