Towels

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I never go anywhere without my towel.

All right, so that's not entirely true. I go plenty of places without my towel, mainly because it's sometimes rather inconvenient to lug a lump of terrycloth around. But it's always in my backpack, which is always with me on campus, so I at least only sometimes go anywhere without my towel. It's one of those life lessons you pick up from such people as the late great sage Douglas Adams.

The towel I carry is one that could easily be considered an antique, as bath towels go. I've had it in my possession since the last century, and before that it belonged to a friend; the pile was already worn to nubbins by the time I gained possession some time around 1997. I have no idea how long its previous owner had it. It could well be older than some of my fellow-students at Good-Sized Midwestern University, on whose campus I happen to be sitting right now.

Its design was, at one time, a swirl of brightly-colored musical notes, though by now everything's sort of munged together into a vaguely purply-blue-reddish-yellowish blur. Its seams are holding up wonderfully well, though I should probably take a needle to it at some point, because it's not going to last many more washings before something gives. If I could do something to make it last forever, I probably would.

The thing about a bath towel is that it isn't necessarily only for bathing with. You can soak up other things with it -- a spilled can of Coke, for instance. You can wrap a book or an mp3 player in it on a rainy day, so that said object stays dry, safe, non-warped and non-shorted-out. You can whip it out when the temperature's below freezing, lay it on a cement bench, and thus sit down without acquiring frostbite of the butt. You can lay it on the muddy ground by a beautiful lake, sit on it with the person you love most in the world, and enjoy one of the very last days you will ever spend by that person's side before they suddenly die without warning.

These are just some of the things I have done with my towel.