Friday, as I mentioned a couple days ago, was Take Your Dog to Work Day. Alas, I did not bring Jewel with me to the newsroom.
Why not? Well, it’s like this:
Jewel was outside with me Friday morning, and it started raining, and she got wet.
As regular readers know, I have no sense of smell, but I’ve heard that damp dogs don’t smell very good. Since I had no way of checking that for myself, I figured I’d err on the side of caution and not walk into the office with a potentially malodorous animal.
When I got to the paper, it was agreed that I had made the right call.
“A wet dog is really not one of the better smells,” city editor Karen Petersen said.
And that actually reminded me of something else, unrelated, that I’d wanted to ask her:
“The towel you use after you take a shower — how long do you use the same one before washing it?”
“Probably longer than most people,” she said, estimating that she likely got a few weeks’ worth of showers out of a towel.
“OK, that’s probably how long I use a towel too, though I don’t really keep track,” I said. “Based on the premise that I’m clean when I get out of the shower, I just use a towel until it occurs to me that I’ve used it awhile and it might be time to throw it in the wash. I do realize, though, that even though I’m clean when I use it, I’m probably sloughing off some skin into it.
“Kim said he gets a new towel every few days,” I said, referring to news editor Kim Jackson. “He says it starts to smell funny.”
“My feeling,” Karen says, “is that old towels just kind of smell funny; after a while, they get a smell in them that just doesn’t really ever go away, except for maybe right when they’ve come out of the wash. That’s when it’s time to stop using them after showers and let them become towels for yoga.”
Yoga towels, I know from experience, get super sweat soaked and, Karen explained, end up with a permanent smell that’s not fantastic.
“Old shirts end up with a smell too,” she said.
“I didn’t know that,” I said. “Life is just kind of different when you can’t smell anything.”
Anyone else want to check in with thoughts on this towel-usage topic?
