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i keep a towel with me
do not panic
The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on
the subject of towels.
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 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.
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