Throwing in the towel
As soon as I drove to the gym, directions home popped up on my iPhone. My Maps app is always trying to reroute me back to my house. My phone is a homebody.
This time, I couldn’t blame the phone. It didn’t want to be at the gym, either. I’ve been trying to make a habit of working out. It’s not working out.
After any time on the treadmill, from one to 60 minutes, I reward myself with some swim time in the pool. I get into my swimsuit, grab my towel and locker key, and head to the pool. Right beside the steps to enter the pool is a row of hooks, a place to hang the locker key and towel.
After 40 minutes of bopping around in the swimming pool, I swam to the edge to get out. I looked up at the hook and didn’t see my towel.
Someone took my beach towel. I’m not saying they stole my beach towel. I’m saying they took it. My towel was hanging next to a similarly colored beach towel. I looked under all the other towels, gym bags, and purses to make sure no one had set their stuff on top of mine, but that was not the case.
The thief, or rather, the person, must have mistaken my towel for theirs. The problem was, I couldn’t just take their towel, in case my assumption was wrong. I couldn’t grab the other multicolored gym towel and take possession of it (willy-nilly style). Luckily, my key was still on the hook because the locker contained my wallet, the aforementioned phone, car keys, and my clothes.
I had to head into the locker room sans towel, soaking wet, like a Labrador in a rainstorm. I dripped all the way to the dry sauna, where I used the intense heat to dry off.
Side note: It’s not that I mourn the loss of the towel. I have plenty of towels. I keep several towels, a swimsuit, a beach blanket, and SPF 30 in the trunk of my car in case of an emergency beach trip situation. You never know when someone might say, “Let’s drive to the beach!” There’s still sand in the trunk from the last emergency beach trip.
But I digress, like I do. I could imagine being the person who accidentally picked up the wrong towel and dried myself off. I would be mortified. I might be too mortified to return it to lost and foundf, even if I took it home, washed and dried it.
I’m not emotionally attached to the towel. It wasn’t a support blanket. It’s gone, and I’ve made my peace with it. My problem is I don’t want to be hyper-vigilant the next time I dip into the pool. I don’t want to be focused on the towel rack instead of enjoying my pool time, because I don’t want to have to do a wet-walk-of-shame back to the locker room again.