At work, I was being such a good boy. I had just entered some information into the computer. Now, I was scanning originals, so that I could recycle the paper and maintain only a digital file. What a good bureaucrat was I.

So as I scanned the small stack of papers, I placed the paperclip that was now unemployed between my lips. Sort of the urban equivalent of a farmer chewing on a long blade of grass (at least I think a farmer would chew on a blade of grass, because I really wouldn’t know, since I am all urban and such).

Finished with my scanning, I headed out of the copy room. Passing the big jar of paperclips, I removed my once used and recently chewed paperclip and tossed it into the jar to be reunited with its comrades.

Catching myself in mid step, I paused. I had just infected the entire jar of paperclips. My completely healthy DNA had recently lightly coated that paperclip. The same paperclip that was now impossible to distinguish from its friends.

Realizing there was nothing that I could do, I continued walking. My sin masked by identically bent metal. My mouth without a paperclip to chew.