My old Couch Dweller (described here) Brian was in town last week (he now lives in NYC - I will hide my jealousy) so we had brunch with other friends and Brian described an event he had with a gym locker that morning. Which led to me coming clean about my own gym locker incident in college-an incident I wouldn't even speak of for awhile afterwards because I was so mortified. (I now think it's hilarious and hope the details don't turn anyone against me).
They built a gorgeous new YMCA near my college in Small Town, Tennessee and they gave us college students a discounted membership - so everyone went there. I had just arrived one afternoon and gotten changed in the locker room, when I went to use the restroom.
Here's where the TMI kicks in.
So, since girls can't "point and shoot" like boys, and since toilet seats are germy, we sometimes have to ...hover. And something went terribly wrong that day with the mechanics of that undertaking and I stood up to realized - the back of my pants were wet. And not just a little bit.
So I'm embarrassed that I've basically proven that I need a diaper IN A BATHROOM STALL and plan to rush right back to my locker, change back into my school clothes, and go home. And I get back to my locker -
And THERE IS A LOCK. ON IT.
In the TWO MINUTES I was in a stall, someone had managed to get confused and think my locker was theirs and put their lock on it. And walk away.
I was dumbfounded. HOW ON EARTH could this possibly happen and why couldn't I find anyone around to help me?
And this was so traumatic that I've blocked out the details of what I did next - which was likely hop around in a panic or back up under a hand dryer - in any case, I remember being alone in the locker room for a while before finally making a run for it to the front desk and having the maintenance guy come charging back with a large pair of bolt cutters.
I grabbed my clothes, changed, and ran to my car, horrified.
(Then, a couple years later at another gym, I got back to my locker after a workout and, once again, saw a lock on it that wasn't mine. Without hesitation I went and asked the front desk to cut it off. Then, after they opened the locker -- it had someone else's clothes inside. I had gotten confused and had actually put my clothes in a different locker. HA! I blamed it on my traumatic incident years before....)
In any case, this story is now one of my favorites and also the reason why when so many, many unbelievable things occur in my daily life, I can simply nod and think - of course that just happened to me. Why wouldn't it?
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