In Praise of Handkerchiefs

I have car­ried a hand­ker­chief since I was a small child because I have always had mild to mod­er­ate broad spec­trum envi­ron­men­tal aller­gies. I have also been teased as an “old man” for car­ry­ing a hand­ker­chief for all of this time.

How­ev­er, the amount of times hav­ing a clean white scrap of cloth in my pock­et has come in handy to share with some­one for unex­pect­ed wounds, unex­pect­ed (or expect­ed) tears, a blown nose, a wiped up spill, or to mit­i­gate some oth­er mild annoy­ance hap­pens far more often than most folks might think.

Peo­ple who tease me about hav­ing a han­ky stop teas­ing me after the first time they need one.

There’s a lot to be said for cer­tain old man behav­iors, and whether you call it chival­ry, civil­i­ty, or some­thing else — being pre­pared to ease and com­fort our fel­low crea­tures in small ways is some­thing worth con­sid­er­ing.