I usually try not to toot my own horn, but I think it is
fair to say that I own the greatest towel in the world.
Like an alcoholic who cannot hold down a steady job, for
many years I have been unable to hold down a steady towel. During the last 12
months alone I’ve been through 3 or 4 towels simply because I leave them behind
when I change towns, or in one notable case because I used my towel to mop up
spilled wine and it became infested with slivers of broken glass.
Even before I ascended to genuine dirtbaggery I struggled
with towel ownership. Back in Canberra I didn’t even own a towel, I just used
other people’s. But when I went to Walmart early this year to buy more
underpants, something incredible happened. I was about to make an impulse
purchase of a regular, monochrome, rectangular towel when my housemate
intervened. She had found a towel that had a hood in the middle and could be
worn like a poncho. Better yet, when you put the towel on in poncho form you were
magically transformed into a tableau of a octopus, sporting a dashing polka-dot
bow-tie, adrift in an azure sea. It was slightly more expensive, and typically
I am a pretty stingy person, but I decided this was not the time to let a few
extra dollars stand in the way of a good idea. The folks at Walmart were all
suitably impressed when I chose to wear my towel out of the store and through
the car-park.
Because my towel is so excruciatingly fantastic I have made
sure to hang on to it through my bumbling travels in the last few months. It
has been my most faithful towel ever, and we are looking forward to a long and
happy life together for as long as the fabric will last. But owning such an
amazing thing comes at a terrible price. Members of the staff at Broken River
have begun to covet my towel, and in the absence of anything meaningful to do
with their lives they have started plotting to steal my towel. In response to
this, I have been forced to hide it after twice having to race from one hut to
another to prevent its theft.
In the past, I would have simply revealed my diabolical
hiding place to the internet and trusted the obscurity of this blog to ensure
that the information never made it back to the staff here, but now that people
around here actually check this blog, the location must remain secret.
The issue reached a head last night after a particularly
intense altercation. One staff member stole my towel from its hanger and tried
to escape White Star Chalet. I was able to dodge past another staff member who
was trying to delay me on the track between the huts and snatch my towel back
before the thief could make it out the door. To top matters off, neither the
thief nor his two accomplices removed their boots before entering the hut. I
figured the safest thing to do was to wear the towel in poncho form, at which
the thief (by now slightly inebriated) tried to manhandle it from my body. The
dastardly trio only left when their boss dropped in. At the time I was
convinced this was simply another ploy to steal the towel, and I conducted our
ensuing conversation wearing the towel and clutching at it to ensure that no
one tried to make a sneak attack. It turns out that he had no idea what was
going on, and in retrospect my actions may have made me look a little weird.
The biggest problem I face now in keeping my towel safe is
getting it dry after using it. At this very moment, the towel is actually
hanging up in a completely stealable place and is not at all hidden, but I’m
keeping an eye on the staff to ensure they don’t go nicking it. Once it’s dry I’ll
return it to its hiding place, but if it goes into hiding too early it will get
mouldy.
But seriously people, this towel is regularly used to dry my
junk. I cannot for the life of me understand why other people would want to
steal it. Apart from the fact that it’s awesome. But other than that, eww...
