Even Flow

Let’s talk about towels. Yeah, towels. There are many uses for a towel…drying a counter top, drying a car after it’s washed, drying a body after a shower…..ok let’s face it. A towel has one purpose in it’s sad little life. Drying SOMETHING!

Now there are many types of towels. There are bath towels, both microfiber and standard do the job. You have dish towels which I have no idea why they are called that. You have wash towels (or rags as we call the in Kentucky) that are perfect for wiping baby faces and super-sized bath towels for super-sized bodies. I would even reluctantly call my microfiber hair wrap a towel for this purpose only.

Some people are towel hoarders, or just can’t fathom discarding them. My parents, no lie, still use bath towels that were THEIR parents. I personally can’t remember getting rid of a bath towel, but they do get relegated to the campers when they are stained or don’t look so great. We have SO MANY towels!

I have bought cute, pretty hand towels for my kitchen after it was redone, but still can’t part with the old ones that my ex-husbands grandma gave me 30 years ago that have paint on them and are wearing thin. Why? Because they still have “use” in them.

Oh shit, I could go deep into some stuff after that line! But I won’t.

Here’s where I’m going with this…..have you ever seen towels used to cover furniture? Seemingly to keep dust off it? Me neither. But imagine, if you will, a barracks room (Pretty much like a standard dorm room), with every inch of furniture covered by a towel. Dresser….towel on top. Night stand…towel. TV cart…..yup, towel on top. And not decorative towels because at the PX you only had the wide variety of brown, navy or maroon. Think about it, it’s practical in many ways. You don’t have to dust, just throw it in the washer. It keeps your furniture from getting scratched. Items don’t roll off when put on the flat surface. But to me it’s weird.

And even more weird is that this song https://youtu.be/CxKWTzr-k6s?si=TlLH5xbHoWGYcBCH by Pearl Jam makes me think of TOWELS. When my ex-husband and I got together, we spent most nights in his barracks room. Yes, he had towels everywhere. And he slept with music on. Now, I cannot sleep when music is playing. I enjoy music too much and it doesn’t make me tired, it makes me LOVE it and want to learn every part of it. But what do you do when you’re in love? You live with it and lie awake for hours listening to Pearl Jam, trying to decipher the lyrics and staring at towels!

As we moved into our own place in Germany I was able to steer away from this use of towels. And eventually steered away from him altogether!

But wouldn’t you know it…..I started dating this Marine (my husband) a few years later, and when I walked into his barracks room I busted out laughing at the towels that were gracing the top surface of every piece of wooden furniture! I started over, retraining another on the proper use of a towel.

I can’t believe I just wrote an article about towels.