Towels and Other Glorious Human Inventions

Each May 25th, the world celebrates Towel Day. As well it should.

While the towel is incredibly useful--essential even--it is unheraleded and generally taken for granted. When is the last time you stopped to acknowledge:

• Your dependence on towels when your hair is dripping, the floor is slippery or the dog is tracking mud into the house?
• Your appreciation of towels when the upholstry in the back seat is too hot to sit on; you're lying on the beach; or covering up in the PE locker room?
• Your reliance on towels for self expression when cheering your favorite team; decorating the bathroom for the holiday; or coordinating colors and designs to complete your interior design?

There are so many unsung heroes and necessities in our lives. I'm beginning to think we might be able to measure the importance of certain objects in our world by the degree to which we take them for granted.

We love our cars, show them off, care for them. But what about motor oil, windshield wiper blades or air filters? Do we ever give attention to these essentials?

We love food and wine. But what about heating elements, pot holders or spatulas? Do we stop to think about how much these objects contribute to our nourishment?

My snoring husband recently got a C-PAP machine. It's like a leaf blower: while sleeping, it blows enough air through the nose and throat to keep the airway from collapsing thereby preventing not only snoring, but the much more dangerous (and potentially deadly) sleep apnea. But for us, the C-PAP offers something much more fundamental, something we typically take entirely for granted: REM sleep.

That's right, before this bit of technology came to our bedroom, my husband lived without REM sleep for as long as five years. REM deprivation makes you tired, sluggish, a little slow on the uptake. Eventually it makes you psychotic. But that's a different story.

We so take this function for granted that two doctors missed the diagnosis altogether and offered anti-depressants instead.

I understand. If we tried to track on every detail of our world and tried to elevate every gadget, electronic or essential bodily function to the level of recognition Towel Day offers, our brains would be overwhelmed and threaten to shatter into a million shards.

And yet, failure to recognize the glorious details that keep us ticking makes them all vulnerable. Like species that slip, almost unnoticed, into extinction.

Think about it. What little things do you take for granted? Click Here to answer.