The Great Napkin Conundrum

Legendary Greek mathematician Pythagoras once said that choices are the hinges of destiny. As such, a wise man takes no choice too lightly and must consider the foreseen and unforeseen implications of his every action. Certainly, in the heat of the moment, it is easy to flippantly fall into a seemingly innocuous course of behavior, but we all know what it is like to live with the deep, burning regret of a crucial missed opportunity.

It is with this heavy heart that I face one of the more vexing and morally ambiguous dilemmas of my years. You see, I fancy myself a frugal man, an adherent to the maxim that a penny saved is a penny earned, yet I seek not to let that penny make me pound foolish. Perhaps these weighty philosophical questions will strike a truer chord when I indulge in you the details of my pressing ontological quandary.

I will begin my recounting with today’s excursion for a midday meal, thereby sparing you the gory details of decades of formative minutiae reaching as far back as the proverbial butterfly flapping its wings in Asia. I ventured from my place of work to the haven of fine Mexican-American cuisine known as Chipotle. Seeing as this establishment’s fare tends to squish and squirt in unexpected directions as it is consumed, I grabbed not a napkin, but a stack of napkins. Dark colored clothing or no, one cannot be too careful when it comes to noontime stains, unless he keeps spare dress shirts in his desk drawers, thereby needlessly evoking suspicion of infidelity from the womenfolk.

Due to some combination of divine intervention and unexpectedly good karma, I was able to avoid having to use the entire pile of napkins I earlier retrieved. Instead, I used precisely three napkins- one to guard my lap from the aforementioned squishes and squirts, one to wipe my mouth at the conclusion of the meal, and one to serve as a buffer between my fork and the uncouth tabletop sullied by my predecessors. More to the point, the remaining napkins in the stack numbered near a dozen, which I believe I was reasonably entitled to keep by the implied social contract between the establishment and myself.

Herein lies the problem. When resources are scarce, value spikes. In the days before my fortuitous acquisition of these napkins, I had mentally noted a need for additional napkins in the desk in my office as well as my car. I could not help but think that I would come to rue whichever choice I made. It felt as though I was being asked which of two children I would like to slaughter.

But if only the question was resolved so simply! The napkins in my desk serve a monumentally vital function to my day to day activities. Not only do I need one to serve as a coaster to prevent a daily coffee ring stain on the desk, I also need to employ a napkin as a makeshift plate on those days that I am required to eat at my desk. I earlier lamented the filth left behind on my restaurant table by the unclean masses; I regret to add that my own office hygiene leaves much the same to be desired. Food and paper establish the first layer of grime, and it is compounded every time I spray compressed air into my keyboard, leaving a veritable plague of dust and crumbs that cannot be wiped away so easily. Am I to eat from this cesspool? Perhaps, but only if my Freudian death drive has shifted into high gear.

On one hand, napkins are extremely important to have on hand in a motor vehicle. From surprise spills to congested sinuses, they can come in extremely handy in a variety of circumstances. What’s more, the bar for replacement products is extremely low, making the napkin a much better option than the next best alternative. Without a napkin in a car, how is one to clean up drops of coffee that cascade down the passenger seat after an unexpected speed bump? What of condensation on the inside of the windshield that the wiper blades cannot reach? And I defy you to tell me what good an old parking receipt will do in cases of a bloody nose. With those facts alone, the car makes a strong case to be the terminal destination of my napkins. I can only relay the sheer horror of the past few days when I have reached into the seatback pocket for a napkin, only to find a few dirty, balled-up wastes that ought to have been properly disposed of long before.

[LEFT: If only I could return to that more innocent time when a napkin was a simple and useful implement as the one pictured here.]

It is worth noting that the “backup plan” in the office is much more palatable than the car cataclysm. In fact, a paper towel dispenser resides in the office kitchen as little as thirty feet from where I sit. But that begs the question of frequency. I certainly will need to walk to that kitchen several times each day when I need a napkin for one purpose or another, whereas the car will only require a napkin in unique and infrequent occurrences. If my daily commute was longer, that would further complicate the issue, as if the conundrum was not already verging on unsolvable without needless hypotheticals thrown into the calculation!

So I sit. I sit pensively. I sit pensively, so moribund and hopeless that my questions expand from cleanliness and convenience to being and nothingness. It is clear that this question will not answer itself, and it will extract a great price from its answerer. It seems as though the only means of sating this deep emptiness inside me is with a purely temporal and aesthetic good, unyoked from the burden of philosophical self-justification. Maybe what I need is a shock to the system, something to remove me from this infinite loop of weight and counterweight. Maybe what I need is simply a snack, but of course, that is going to require me to find a napkin.