iontkonhsokewáhtha

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels.

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have.  Partly it has great practical value — you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindbogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you ~ daft as a brush but very very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value.  For some reason, if a Strag (strag: non-hitchhiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet-weather gear, space suit, etc., etc.  Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have ‘lost’. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still know where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Hence, a phrase which has passed into hitchhiking slang, as in “Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect?  There’s a frood who really knows where his towel is.”  (sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy:  really together guy; frood:  really amazingly together guy)

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What my friend Ganien (who is most definitely a hoopy frood), for whom I read the HHGG to begin with, and therefore gets asked things like, “Do you know where your towel is?”, has to say on the subject of towels:

I always know where my towel is.  But the laundry fairy…

(NOTE, re: Laundry Fairy ~ I am forever lamenting my lack of a laundry fairy; I find it intolerable that the laundry is not magically done for me by a little winged creature so that I can spend my days doing more interesting things, like reading the Hitchhiker trilogy and having orgasms.  Not necessarily at the same time.  Ganien does have a laundry fairy, in the form of his wife, who does not have wings; I find this grossly unfair.)

THIS perfectly describes my yesterday.

…is not very fair to my towel.  You see, I wake up first and shower and put my wet towel on the towel rod.  The laundry fairy takes her shower, dries with her towel, then she uses my towel to wipe down the tile so there isn’t any mold growing.  Then she drops my towel on the floor and steps on it and shuuffs around until the floor is clean (but the towel is NOT).  Then she hangs my towel back on the towel rod to dry.  If I’m lucky, she remembers it is dirty and puts it in the hamper when it’s dry.  If I’m not lucky, I get a face full of whatever was all over every surface in the bathroom, the next morning when I try to dry off.

I am often, not lucky.

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But I am lucky.  Very very lucky, because I sass such a hoopy frood.

There are times when our exchanges save my sanity.

Consider this an appreciation post.

And to my dear friend…  Niawen’kó:wa, Kanienke.  For loving me the way you do.