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| Intro | My Story | History | Advantages | Uses | What can I do? | Wanted |
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You may have already been asking yourself "Why has this individual built a website dedicated to hankies?" I accept it's a legitimate question and a fair point that warrants an answer.
It all stems from a life-defining incident when I was about 8 years old. It was a beautiful spring morning. And I was in church. We had just completed our monthly walk around the local streets before playing 'When the Saints Go Marching In' in front of our Boy's Brigade hall. Church parade was only marginally worse than Sunday School, but you were only ever at either because Boy's Brigade required it. The interesting thing about that, is that most of the boys only went to Boy's Brigade because the hall was shared with the Girl Guides. In effect, we went to church, to find out what girls wore under their dresses. Thank you Lord! Anyway, back to church. I was having difficulty concentrating on keeping quiet at the same time as focusing on annoying the smaller kids in the row in front. There was something on my mind. Possibly one of the most nagging inconveniences to interfere with a young boy's opportunities for mischief; I had a runny nose! Like other kids in similar situations, I narrowed my choices of action down to three alternatives. I could:
I had been sniffing for the last 15 minutes and old biddies in church were starting to notice. Normally a young boy would not care much about the rights of the senior members of the community. However, in church pensioners take on a new form, a kind of ultra-biddy. And they're not to be messed with! One cold stare from any of these grey-faced silent assassins could cause you to instantly soil yourself. I needed to address my nasal trauma and do something to stop the need to keep sniffing and snorting. I did not want to just ignore it, and thus become a 'crusty lips', so I needed to identify the closest pseudo-hanky I had; the old faithful sleeve of my jumper. A classic hanky alternative for a young boy. As soon as my sleeve came close to the bottom of my nose, I felt a drip of snot latch on to it. Now, usually a sleeve wipe is contained within the cuff area, but anticipating a big pass, I had started at my elbow. I never thought that I would run out of room from here. But I did. As I started to move my arm past my nose, I realised I had opened the floodgates. The more snot came out, the more it encouraged more to emerge. How could one small nose produce well over a foot of jelly? Eventually the sleeve came to an end, but the snot did not. Much like when you have to finish a biting off a slice of pizza rather than just tearing it away to avoid cheese pinging back on your face, I had to continue the wipe until the bitter end. The remainder of the sermon was spent by myself trying to find clean patches of clothing on which to wipe my hand before the glistening coating dried, and made me look like I had a bad fungal infection. I'm sure to this day it was all the work of our Lord taking exception to me using his home as a place to taunt and tease the younger ones. The volume of nasal discharge was nothing short of a miracle. From that day, I decided that handkerchiefs are a very good idea. And I continue to discover more reasons why so. That is why I have a passion for recognising the work of the hanky. I have always been curious why getting out a handkerchief always provokes an interesting reaction. I accept that it is not usual for a young person (I was at the time of writing) to carry such an accessory, but am constantly surprised by the number of people who ask me why I carry a hanky. Mind you, that is much better than people asking "Do you carry a handkerchief?" when I've just got one out of my pocket. If you are that type of person, I'd rather you leave this site and do mankind a favour by making sure you never procreate. |
