Of my many idiotic obsessions, one of the least reasonable is moist towelettes. Not Wet-Naps. You BUY those. I mean the delightfully-lemon-scented things that you get in tiny little foil wrappers at restaurants.

I hoard them.

No, really, I hoard them. Every time that I am gathered with friends and someone orders Buffalo wings, I wait until I believe that no one is looking and steal all of the little moist towelette packets.

I have no idea why I believe that anyone else is so desperate to have these things that they will mind my taking them; nor do I know why I can't just ask if I can have them. I have to steal them surreptitiously.

I've tried valiantly to explain why I like them so much. "They're great for cleaning off your computer screen," I'll tell people. "And they're great for cleaning overhead sheets!" In either case, marginally true, but a thin guise for the simple fact that I MUST HAVE MOIST TOWELETTES.

I think I've figured out why they fascinate me so much. God knows they're not really very useful for getting wing sauce or Old Bay off your hands, especially when--one hopes--the restaurant that handed them to you has a perfectly serviceable bathroom sink. I believe it's another Proustian Madeleine sort of thing.

When I was a kid you only EVER saw Moist Towelettes on trains and airplanes. They were part of the exotica of travelling. Elsewhere, you washed your hands like any normal person, but while en route, your cardboard sandwich (whether rail- or air-borne) came with a little lemon-smellin' alcohol wipe. It just became part of the cool magic of travelling.

I also love the magazines that Amtrak and the airlines put into the little pockets on the backs of seats. Of course, they always tell the reader about the wonderful things to do in various cities that they serve. Since I only ever go to about three or four other cities, I don't know why I find this so fascinating; if there's anything interesting to do in Richmond, DC, Baltimore and Philadelphia, I've already done it. Still, reading about it in Amtrak's magazine makes me feel cool: "Wow, I already knew about the Virginia Museum, but I bet all these other losers on this train didn't!!!"

Needless to say, I'm endlessly amused with barf bags. The laminated safety card is fun too, though in most cases, I think it should just say "In case of emergency: Bend over, place head between legs, kiss ass goodbye."

Fairly recently, a friend who once lived in Baltimore but now lives in Florida told me that I should just "fly down next weekend." Even though I know that air travel is now ridiculously cheap, that sort of gallivanting never occurs to me. I know--technically--that I could. I won't, though. I grew up in a world where flight was almost prohibitively expensive, long train trips were a major ordeal, and long drives the sort of major ordeal that you planned for months. The idea that I might just say "Oh, what the hell, I'll fly down to Florida this weekend" is right up there with "I know, let's create a perpetual motion machine over drinks tonight."

This is why I like these weird paper (and moist paper) ephemera of travel. They make me think of travel when it was still a very big deal to go as far as Roanoke, much less Florida; travel as something to anticipate and to be excited about, rather than travel as just a daily--and probably annoying--event.

I also just cleaned the computer screen. If my computer is as excited about the lemony freshness as I am, the next few posts may not make a lot of sense.