You never knew it had a name

"Sometimes it is," she said.
I nodded. Watched the rapid blinking of her eyes, shiny with unspilled tears. Watched the moisture that had pooled in the little valley above her top lip. What was that indentation called? I always forgot. But God, didn't it feel nice the way her fingertips were grazing the veins on the back of my hand?

The above passage comes from a novel that I just finished reading last night. It is the latest book written by Wally Lamb and is titled `The Hour I First Believed'. I bought the book at Popular Book Store's fair a few months back and it has taken me this long to finish reading it. At two and a half inches thick, it is one of the thickest novels I have held in my hands. And it has a great story. Pure human drama that spans a few generations from the 1800's to the modern day. But this post is not a book review... I may do that a bit later, if I do manage to digest and summarize the multiple-layered stories into a few lines.

A very good read but only for those with patience

Let's go back to the passage above, specifically to the part about the groove in the middle of our upper lip right below the nose. I am sure the author knows what it is called but he wrote it as a question, perhaps to prod his readers to actually find out for themselves.

The moment I read the sentence, I became agitated with myself... because just a few weeks before, I had read an amusing website link shared by a friend that shows a list of `25 everyday things you never knew had names', and that groove on the upper lip was one of the 25... but I could not remember. Feeling a bit peeved at my poor memory, I put down the book, fired up my laptop and went online to search for the link.

Philtrum... that's what it is called. So now you know...