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In this April 2, 1990, file photo, UNLV coach Jerry Tarkanian chews on his towel while watching his team play Duke in the championship game of the NCAA college basketball Final Four in Denver.

Ed Reinke/AP

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Here’s your sign.

I was 11 years old when the Canadian rock group Five Man Electrical Band scored the Billboard No. 24 song of 1971 with the hit tune “Signs.”

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The lyrics tell of a long-haired freaky person who clearly doesn’t care for any of the signs in his life. As the chorus puts it: ”Do this, don’t do that / Can’t you read the sign?”

To be honest, I never much cared for the song. Because unlike 5MEB, I’m a huge respecter of signs. Always have been.

• When I was a little kid, and the sign said, “Do not run in the pool area,” I did not run in the pool area. Granted, like every other kid headed for the slide or diving board, I did that swivel-hipped fast walk thing to get there as soon as possible. But the governing body of any reputable race-walking association wouldn’t have disqualified me for my form.
• As a teenager, when the sign said, “Please keep off the grass,” I kept off the grass. For one thing, they did say “please.” And I just assumed they had a good reason for asking me to stay off it.
• And these days, when the sign in the HOV lane on the freeway says, “Do not cross double white lines,” I do not cross double white lines. It bothers me when I see motorists flaunting that one.

I’ve always been a firm believer in the ultimate authority of signs.

So last weekend, when my wife and I spent a couple of days at Lake Tahoe, I once again took the sign in our bathroom to heart. Hanging from a towel rack, it read: ”SAVE OUR PLANET. Dear Guest, Every day millions of gallons of water are used to wash towels that have only been used once. You Make The Choice: A towel on the rack means ‘I will use again.’ A towel on the floor means ‘Please replace.’ “

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Before we proceed here, you should know I have no problem reusing towels. At home, if my wife didn’t occasionally sneak it off the rack and throw it in the washer, I’d still be using the same unwashed terrycloth from 2011. (My justification? Hey, how dirty could it get? It’s only used to dry freshly soaped and scrubbed flesh.)

While we’ve seen these “Save Our Planet” signs for years in hotel bathrooms all over the country, there’s something that’s always bothered me about it: Without fail, we’ll hang our towels on the towel racks in the morning and when we return to our room in the evening the towels are back on the shelves.

Now I had always just assumed that housekeeping was simply folding them and putting them back in their original places in the bathroom. But the problem then became: Whose towel is whose?

I’ve complained about this to my wife for years. And every time we’ve gone on vacation, she’s patiently listened to my whose-towel-is-this-anyway rant. But this past weekend, exasperated by my years-long fixation on the topic, she finally weighed in. And it caused the light to go on in my head.

“They’re probably just giving us new towels,” she said matter-of-factly.

Click!

I hadn’t even considered that possibility. The signs, after all, have been telling me if I hung my towel on the rack to dry, that meant I would use it again. I just assumed they were leaving us the same towels.

It hadn’t occurred to me that the hotel wasn’t even bothering to obey its own towel signs. But maybe my wife was right. Maybe they were ignoring our environmentally responsible choice and just giving us fresh towels every day.

It’s a considerable problem. The Environmental Protection Agency has estimated that about 15 percent of the total water used by commercial/institutional facilities can be attributed to hotels and other lodgings. And laundry operations account for about 16 percent of a hotel’s total water use. Reusing towels saves a great deal of water, energy, labor and linen-replacement costs.

So then, if hotels are folding our used towels and placing them back on the shelf, they at least need to give us some way of telling them apart — like different colors of towels. And if they’re just going ahead and giving us new towels every day anyway, so much for a hotel’s supposedly “green” measures.

Plus, if it’s the latter it certainly makes one wonder: What other important signs are businesses winking at?

Surely not the “Employees must wash hands before returning to work” signs in restaurant bathrooms?

Contact Mark Saal at 801-625-4272 or msaal@standard.net. Follow him on Twitter at @Saalman. Friend him on Facebook at facebook.com/MarkSaal.