I don’t mind sharing - just stay away from my beach towels

As I washed the dishes at the lake cabin this morning, I counted 14 dirty cups. The funny part is that only six were ours!

Actually, this did not take me completely by surprise, as it is quite a common occurrence, and I know that our neighbors all have a similar mismatched set in their kitchens. I’ll send the kids around to exchange them when they wake up, not that it matters, but it’s just something we do.

At some point, we’ll have most of our cups back, but then it will begin again. We’ll go to Bill and Julie’s for coffee and leave with some in their flowered mugs for the walk home. Leanne will come over and we’ll pour iced tea into my plastic tumblers, which we then carry to her dock. Kathleen and Terry will drop by with a glass of wine and later leave without their glasses. Within a week or two, they’ll all be mixed up again. That’s just how it is out here, and I love it.

The thing about it is though, that it’s not just cups. It’s a lot of things – life jackets, sand chairs, sweatshirts, kids … (just kidding). Everything just seems to sort of get mixed up until we straighten it out. None of this bothers me in the least, but there is one thing that … I … I … Shhhh, I’m so ashamed … I don’t really like to share. That thing, is my bright, beautiful, beloved beach towels.

I didn’t always have this obsession – it never used to be a problem … I’d have my own lovely, soft towel at the beach. I’d carry it there, use it, carry it home, hang it on a hook and repeat the next day.

Then, the kids got old enough to carry them, and my whole beach towel world turned upside down. Every year, the attrition rate of my beach towels seems to rise. I must admit that for every towel I lose, another smaller, older and “not my” towel seems to take its place. Now they’ve all started to look alike and I have this irrational suspicion that they’re all mine, or were at one time. I find myself eyeing total strangers at random beaches and pools, pointing and hissing to a friend, “Hey, is that my towel?”

I know exactly when the final straw broke and I became obsessed. It was that fateful day in August, three summers ago, when I watched three of my lovely new Costco beach towels sail away on someone else’s boat. It really wasn’t their fault – they had kids and guests and nobody (obviously) knew whose was whose. My kids had taken them and (gulp) left them on the beach (!) before I had the chance to put our name on them – as if that really helps anyway. Permanent marker seems to fade off towels in a hurry, and unless you’re really looking, it’s barely noticeable anyway. You know what? Someone needs to come up with a really good way to mark beach towels. Maybe we could tie a big colored ribbon on a corner or something. Hey, that’s actually not a bad idea – each cabin could have their own color of ribbon

and …

Oh, sorry. Back to my long lost (sniff) towels. I thought about them all the next winter but never had the guts to ask those people if they might have accidentally picked up my unmarked, everyone has the same, gorgeous, new Costco towels. I just couldn’t do it. So the next year, to avoid that very problem, we bought dark colored, extra large bath towels, thinking no one will pick these up because they don’t look like anyone else’s and besides, they are boring and ugly. Well guess what? I don’t like them either! To be honest, I really only know where two of the eight are today and I’m not crying about it. If I saw one on the beach tomorrow, I most certainly would not give the old “Is that my towel?” routine. They just don’t do it for me.

This spring, I stood by the huge box of luscious, colorful, fun-patterned beach towel display at Costco. I knew I shouldn’t, but I couldn’t help myself. Yep. Just asking for more misery, I bought some. Uh huh. Guess what? I am so afraid of losing my beauties that they are still tucked away, on the top shelf of my linen closet … in town!

I don’t know what the answer is. Until I figure it out, we’ll just continue to use the ones that seem to end up on our deck until their owner comes looking, just like we do with the cups, the chairs and the sweatshirts. And until then, I will just visit my babies when I’m in town, until it is safe to someday bring them out, if ever. Hey, is that my towel?