Marn's extra walk up the hill
reminded me that I, um, "forgot" to write about my own idiocy the other day. Since
starting back to work, and thus back to showering at the gym, I've been using a
key lock mostly because that happens to be the first lock I found lying around
when I looked for one. In fact, just the other day I was thinking, "You know, it's
really stupid to carry keys around when I don't have to -- I should go look for
the combo lock I know is around somewhere."
Then I made my second
mistake. I try to wear glasses once or twice a week to give my eyes a break from
contact lenses. I can wear them to the gym, but try to avoid it on rowing days as
I don't want to lose my glasses on the day my 12-year dry streak breaks and I fall
in. So I wore my glasses on Thursday. Now, I don't know why, but I am demonstrably
and measurably stupider when I can't see. Apparently, my brain thinks that if the
rest of the world is fuzzy, it ought to join in.
So yesterday, I got
up, dragged myself to the gym, put my stuff in a locker, worked out (dragging my
keys with me the whole time, as well as my erg log and water bottle), returned to
the locker room, took out what I needed to shower, and put everything else
(everything else) back in the locker. And (you knew this all along) locked
it. And as you may have noticed in your own life, keys don't generally fall into
the category of "things needed to shower".
Naturally, I didn't
realize all this until I had stumbled along the blurry way to the shower, sluiced
down, and come back to the locker, ready to put my eyes back on and get dressed.
That would be the point at which the "Oops!" feeling hit, with me there in nothing
but a towel and unable to see anything more than two feet in front of me (I
navigate around blurs pretty well, though, due to much
practice).
Fortunately, my gym keeps a bolt-cutter on hand,
presumably for cutting off locks that are left on overnight. Even more
fortunately, there were other women in the locker room, who were not only willing
to go get someone with said bolt-cutters, but who somehow managed not to laugh at
me. (Rudder laughed, when I told him the story. Hell, I'd have laughed
too.)
Result: a happy ending. But I really do need to go find that
other lock now!