So, the past few days have consisted of packing. If you have ever packed for a trip that includes a fair amount of ambiguity as to where you will be going and what you will be doing this can lead to an unpleasant sensation of panic. ie) you are going to a foreign country for 8-ish months (but even that is a round about guess) where you may need to look professional but also may travel during your time there, and have no idea where you are going to live. “Hmm... do you really need to bring this? What about that? Oh, now come on, seriously, why the heck are you packing THAT?” Goes the conversation in my head. All of this then leads down the dangerous path where we begin to weigh the loathsome baggage of material things on the freedom of our spirits... and then it gets really ugly. Linking something pragmatic (like a suitcase) to something abstract (criticizing materialism) leads to indecision and yep, you guessed it, panic.
So, there I was, vacillating over a faded blue towel outstretched in my hand. “Really, a towel. Kadyn, come on. You are bringing a towel? This is precious real estate, this here suitcase. Do you really want to fill this corner with a roll of terrycloth?” and then, “Have I really just spent the last 15 minutes thinking about a freakin' towel?!” I was about to despair and throw the proverbial towel in, when a synapse way back in my brain fired a fond and distant memory. (Note to the friendly reader: this entry is going to get weird from here on out, unless you have read one of the BEST books ever, “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy”. If you have read it, it will be even weirder, but better because at least you'll know what I am talking about).
A small voice, not unlike the volume of a small white mouse, reminded me what this book has to say about towels:
“A towel, it says, is ab
out 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 vapours; 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 to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you - daft as a bush, but 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-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker 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 hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker 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 knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with."
Alright. I'm taking the towel.
*quotation from The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Also, towels are supposedly quite expensive in France so bringing one for free from the States would be smart but that is besides the point of this here story.
