Don’t Forget your Towel!

To quote from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker 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, 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.

This year I actually remembered. Yay! Usually I am a few months to late. Which kind of sucks because this is one of the few ‘holidays’ I really get into and look forward to. It is such an amazing way of celebrating Douglas Adams’ life and his wonderful creations. It’s astounding that something as beautifully silly as “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” has touched so many people. It makes me bubble over with happiness just thinking about it. Well almost. I am not quite the bubbling personality type. It is something that I can only dream of that I would one day I would get such an awesome tribute to my life as this.

The origin of the towel joke

The full version of this story was first found in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: The Original Radio Scripts and reprised in The Salmon of Doubt, but the short version is as follows: Adams had gone on holiday in Greece, but every time he had decided to go to the beach with his fellows, he discovered that his towel would disappear, and could be found only after hours of searching.

After the holiday had ended, he decided that anyone who really had their life in order would always know the location of such a useful item, hence the fictional aphorism “A hoopy frood always knows where his towel is”. He had no idea that this towel joke, which first appeared in the seventh radio episode, and subsequently in the first book, would catch on so thoroughly.

He assumed, after learning that so many people liked and understood the joke, that he was not the only one with such an experience. After his death, Towel Day was established on May 25 as a tribute (two weeks after the date of his death).

Happy Towel Day Everyone! And remember, don’t forget your towel!! ;-P