How-To

When you use a public gym, and you shower up afterwards, you have the choice of using your own towel or one of the ones the gym provides. There are advantages to using your own, but it means you are then stuck with a wet towel in your car or truck for the rest of the day, and after awhile the scent can tend to overpower even the mightiest pine-tree cutout air freshener hung from the mirror. So many people decide to use the towels provided by the gym. Here are some things to keep in mind:

1. Although the whitest towels are obviously the newest, that does not necessarily make them the best ones to select. Public gyms tend to work on a budget, which means they do not buy the high-end, deep pile soft towels that you may prefer at home. The newest towels may also be kind of rough, like sandpaper that hasn't yet been used. With similar unpleasant results.

2. Towels that aren't eye-blindingly white will probably be softer. But again, because public gyms work from a budget, they wish to get the most use possible out of all of their supplies and equipment. This means that a towel will be kept for the maximum possible time, and it may have lost absorbency to the point that the towel you select will actually just move the water around your body, rather than dry it off. This will be embarrassing when you put on your pants.

3. If, when you arrive at the locker room to change, you see that there are relatively few towels left on the towel shelf, it is probably a good idea to snag one and put it in your locker. Sometimes the gym staff is a little short-handed in the ol' laundry room and there may be none left when you return from your workout, which will mean you have to try to dry yourself with your clothes. This is rarely effective.

4. In the workout room itself, my gym offers hand towels which you can take with you to mop sweat off while you work out. They also offer, for some reason unknown to humanity, what can only be described as dish towels for the same purpose. Do not use these; they have the consistency of paper towels and are useless unless you sweat only once during your workout.

5. These towels have in fact been used by other people with drying habits other than your own. On second thought, don't keep that in mind. Get it as far out of your mind as possible. Far, far out of your mind. Look, a flower...