Towels are for Wusses

Actually, the phrase is “towels are for pussies” but I won’t use that version myself because, well, it’s a bit sexist, isn’t it? In its defence, the phrase was coined by a woman for the benefit of another woman with no men for miles around. And, now I come to think of it, it probably has a double meaning relating to sanitary towels, doesn’t it? But hey ho.

Oh! By “hey ho,” I didn’t mean…

Never mind.

Towels are for wusses.

It comes from Homesick: Why I live in a Shed by Catrina Davies. I read it a little while ago and liked it quite a bit.

“Towels are for pussies” is what the author’s sister used to say after they went swimming together in a natural lake. Drying off with a towel, when you could dry slowly and naturally in the sun, is bourgeois and hoity-toity. Not taking a dip just because you don’t have a towel is a failure to seize life.

The phrase stuck with me. Not only does the phrase fleet across my mind almost every day when drying off after a shower, it comes to mind whenever I think, “oh, I can’t do X right now because I don’t have X.”

Forget about X! Let nature handle it! Or at the very least, improvise.

For ages now, in the kitchen, I’ve been using a small coffee cup as a ladle. I don’t know why I don’t have a ladle. I suspect I once had one but either lost it or (if it was plastic) melted it.

I know I once intended to get a ladle but I kept forgetting, and my improvised replacement (the cup) does the job just fine. In fact, over time, I have become accustomed to thinking of that cup as a unit of measurement. Ladles, like towels apprently, are for wusses.

All I’m saying, I suppose, is that a certain kind of creative thinking or biting the bullet can be equal to (and, sometimes, preferable to) resorting to a commercial solution. Whether your surroundings are natural, domestic or otherwise, just use what’s around instead of delaying until you can go shopping for yet another thing.

Blimey, this is like a 2010-12 New Escapologist post, isn’t it?

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