MY KINGDOM FOR A TOWEL

I am just getting back into the habit of going to the gym.

Part of me ROARS every time I begin to put my workout stuff in a bag - "What?! There is so much HERE that needs to be done! Why are you wasting time going into town!!??"

And there is an insistent nagging voice that says that all I need to do is go outside and just go for a walk around the block here at home (which is just a little more than 2 miles for me).

However, the more persuasive and seductive voice is the one that softly whispers, "Why don't you just go ahead and take a nap instead?!"


For this past week I have been good about ignoring all this and getting to the gym to do a little BABY workout - I am in poor enough shape that a 20 minute walk knocks me out.

But yesterday I forgot something.

No, I remembered my new workout shoes - I even took TWO bras (one by accident) and a change of clothes - I took my favorite workout shirt (the gray one).

But I forgot to take a towel for my shower.


I did get spoiled at my old gym, which provided unlimited amount of clean, fresh white towels for wiping your sweaty brow, and in a pinch serving as a towel for your shower.

My current gym does not have any such service.

So standing there, no towel, half-naked, sweating, still breathing hard, I reviewed my options:

--- I could put back on my sweaty gym outfit, ignore my in-town errands and simply drive back home and take a shower there.

---  I could wipe myself down with paper towels ("spit bath" is what the Army calls it)

---  Or I could use what resources were available - a hand-towel and a face-cloth.

Believe it or not, you can get pretty dry using just a hand-towel.

PUBLIC APOLOGY TO HAWAIIAN AIRLINES FLIGHT 36

First, allow me explore some dark scenarios with you - nightmares inspired by CNN then exploited by Fox News until you will hide under your bed whimpering and shaking for the rest of your limited and miserable existence.

Number one: H1N1 (previously called the "swine flu," but since that phrase didn't scare people enough and somehow restricted it to poor Mexicans who don't travel enough internationally to allow it to become a terrifying pandemic, it became H1N1, which is a WHOLE lot more frightening, reeking of control, test tubes, modified genes and government control - it also helps that a large monetary penalty applies to any news source which uses 'swine flu' instead of the shocking H1N1).

Here I think the major scare factor is that you can't really tell when you have H1N1 as opposed to a regular case of the flu (like Alzheimer's - diagnosed only when your brain is autopsied) BUT WITH H1N1 the chance that YOU ARE GOING TO DIE are so INCREDIBLY INCREASED like from 1.12% to 1.13% DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS YOU ARE GOING TO DIE DIE DIE and you aren't even going to KNOW IT IS H1N1 UNTIL AT YOUR FUNERAL!!

Number two: Terrorists - difficult as it is to keep the attention-deficit American public aware that there are still extremists who passionately believe in blowing up people (including themselves), the new image of fear is suicide-bombers targeting public areas where the public congregate - such as football stadiums, shopping malls, and the line to the only clean stall in the ladies restroom.

That is when terrorists will strike - something like anthrax dropped in the middle of the Super Bowl (just when the score is tied in the fourth quarter with 29 seconds left on the play clock and Houston has control of the ball) - or at the newest Target Enormément (the fourth in Venice, California this year) , a short man of uncertain but darker ancestry (wearing a baseball cap and a New England Patriots shirt - I have learned everything I know about criminals from NCIS, CSI and Law and Order) will be moving slowly through the crowd injecting each impatient customer individually with a rare and complex virus that IMMEDIATELY turns them into a mindless zombie who RUNS to Wal-Mart, purchases ALL the Charmin Toilet Paper and drive America insanely short of tissue choices.


Okay. Now back to my story.

So imagine a crowded flight of tourists... excuse me, visitors (the Hawaiian Visitor's Bureau feels that sounds better).... so a flight of crowded visitors.... um.... a visitor flight of crowds? Whatever - I was on an airplane for a long, long flight with a great number of other people (42% of Asian ethnicity, 31% military families, and the remaining 27% wearing tee shirts printed saying "Waikiki Forever" & "Kona Dry Goods").

And yes, I was that woman nosily expelling globs of nasal mucus into tissue after tissue after tissue - and then coughing and hacking and spitting up phlegm the entire seven hours of our flight, spending whatever cooties she had through each and every molecule of re-conditioned and shared 1.8 cubic feet of air per passenger throughout the entire airplane.

This is the only flight I wished had been crying infants and screaming toddlers to cover up all of the disgusting sounds I was producing.

And if 98% of the people scrunched in with me didn't think at least once about H1N2, close quarters, and this might be something more than a cold, I will eat my hat.

I think I was saved from a public lynching (or being locked into the smallest restroom) only by the mind-numbing in-flight movie of Eddie Murphy in Nickelodeon's "Imagine That" (hasn't the plot of overly-detached-father-figure ignores cute-little-girl-figure until magical-connection-or-curse joins-them-together been done about, what, three billion times now?).


Again, to all on that flight, my deepest and sincerest apologies to everyone who was on that flight.