We got towels for Christmas. The parcel from Ontario took a little abuse and the wrapping paper is a little torn and I can touch and see the bright, soft, white towels.
I want to use them. I want to caress their stitching. I want to pull them out and polish my skin with them. Apparently there is a rule about this sort of thing. I have to stare through the torn wrapping at the towels for 7 more days before I can hang them in a place of honour in my bathroom. I doubt my bathroom has ever seen a brand new towel! I don’t remember the last time I saw a brand new towel. Except for the really nice, soft orange ones at Sears that belonged to Martha Stewart. But I wouldn’t take Martha’s towels. She has little enough comfort.
The stripey towel was brand new when I got it. It was a housewarming gift when I moved to the mint-green bachelor suite in the pink building with the cockroaches and the kitchen window view of the rear end of Denny’s. The towel was so unhappy. It thought it was moving to a nice, downtown condo where it would drape around the neck of someone on a treadmill. After the first few days as my only towel, being used for hair dying, mopping up puddles, drying between my toes, blotting my endless tears as the cockroaches mocked me from the mint-green ceiling, just out of spray-range of my bottle of Black Flag, it started running away.
Once, I found it at the pub, hiding in a corner behind a fake cactus, soaking up martinis. Another time it was at Shopper’s Drug Mart, trying to cash in my Optimum points for a plane ticket to the Seychelles.
Poor, tired, stripey towel. It has retired now, to a life of being the hair towel. I like how the stripes look when I fashion that towel turban on top of my head. I hope it really is happier and hasn’t just stopped trying to run away because it knows I will find it.
Wherever it goes. And it won’t get very far in the suburbs at Christmas. Hear that, towel?