Tale of the Towel

When you join my health club, they take a picture of you for your membership card. I believe the intent is to confirm that the name on the card matches the person in the picture when you sign in. So someone can't steal your card and use it for themselves. Except that the picture they took of me is so dark you can't tell who it is. You can't even tell whether it's a man or a woman, except for my name. And they never seem to check that. They just scan the card.

I think I should give my card to a guy friend sometime and see if he can get in, since, apparently, the front desk doesn't care whose picture or name is on the card, as long as the membership is paid up.

Today there was trouble. I asked for my usual locker -- 107 -- no reason, I'm just a creature of habit. Unfortunately, for the first time since I've been asking for 107, it wasn't available, but 104 was. Fine, I can go with the flow. But when I asked the very bald guy at the desk for my usual three postage stamp towels [it takes that many to get the coverage I need] I was shot down.

In a very strange way.

"Sorry you can only have two towels," he said. [I should point out that these towels can only cover your butt or your front, but not both at the same time. And one of them has to also dry my hair.]

"But I ALWAYS get three." [You probably wouldn't understand Mr. Cue Ball, since you haven't used a comb since 1958. ]

"Sorry, rules say you can only have two." [Rules and I rarely see eye to eye.]

"But I always get three," I repeated, to no one who cared.

Now here's the part that left me shaking my head:

"If you want a third towel you have to bring one of the other ones back." 

WTF?
 
So, I'm standing there, thinking to myself while shooting daggers at the bald guy -- you're saying that after my shower, when I'm standing naked and toweling off my head with one towel, and drying off my front with a second towel, that I have to leave the shower area to go to the front desk to exchange one of those two wet towels in order to get a third dry towel, so I can finish drying off my backside? 

I had seriously contemplated doing just that. For a second or two. Or bringing the two soaking wet postage stamp sized towels back down and throwing them at the guy when I was done. That is, until I opened up locker number 104. And discovered two fresh towels waiting for me. 

Something serendipitous like that hasn't ever happened to me, since I first joined the club over 30 years ago, when it was private and fancy. And finding two fresh towels in my locker definitely hasn't happened since the club became a park district facility. 

Karma.

Now that I had four towels to dry me off, I thought about taking them all down to the desk when I was done -- after sticking them under the shower to insure they were good and wet first -- and tossing them at the bald guy.

But it was just easier to leave them in the wet towel bin. And dream of what might have been. 

And get a blog entry out of it.