back when I was a tiny teen of a mere 15 years, I lived with (shacked up, cohabited, made fuck with) a guy and we shared a studio apartment with two roommates. We were all slobs of the near-highest order and after four months I was entertaining someone who asked me two pertinent quesions: 1)”do you have a light?” and 2)”what kind of carpet do you have?”

Both questions were unanswerable by any of us at the time.

We had an emergency household meeting and made two discoveries:
1)No one was stealing lighters, they were disappearing of their own accord.
2)We really needed to clean up the place.

We set about cleaning up as a team. Many friends were temporarily lost as we insisted they either join the fray or leave us in in OCD peace.
We actually made many discoveries while cleaning up, the most important being that the stove really was functional and the bathroom sink didn’t “naturally” leak. Much rejoicing at the finding of serviceable cans of food in the pantry we had never opened.

We found out that we didn’t have carpeting; our floor was wood painted a kind of industrial green. (which might explain our confusion upon ingesting various forms of recreational inebriants and staring at the “grassy knoll” that was lurking under all the paper tossed on the floor)

We discovered (dum-de-da-DAH!!) the breeding grounds of all the lighters we thought we “owned”.

Apparently, lighters DO congregate, they DO have conception, and they DO spawn new lighters.

This fact has been proven to my satisfaction