April 20, 2018
Dear Everyone:
Don’t you hate conversations that begin with the words “I’ve just done
something incredibly stupid…”?
So do I.
Especially when I’m the one who did it.
No, this isn’t a case of A Certain Someone locking her keys in her car
and needing me to drive to
Walnut
Creek and unlock it for her.
This time, I’m the one who did something excruciatingly dumb.
I’ve been taking “Aquatic Therapy” sessions in nearby
Livermore
every Thursday and Monday.
There is a Women’s
Locker Room, very nice, with lots and lots of
lockers to use.
The Grey Lockers are for people who pay to use the facilities on
a monthly basis. The White
Lockers are for Day
Trippers like me.
First, you select a White Locker, one that isn’t currently in use.
You can easily tell which ones are occupied because they have a
tiny red blinking light in the keypad on the door, and they won’t open
when you pull on the handle.
Find an unlocked locker, stuff your things in and close the door.
Then you press the “C” key on the keypad (for “Clear”), followed by four
numbers, followed by pressing the key that has a little symbol that
looks like an old-fashioned key (for “Lock”).
Now the door is locked and the keypad has a tiny red blinking
light to show the locker is locked.
To unlock the door, you repeat the sequence of keys.
There’s only one problem.
And no, it’s not that I forgot the number.
It’s that these lockers are very small.
Roughly 30 inches by 18 by 10.
Once I put in my shoes,
purse and jacket the locker was full.
There was no room left for my clothes once I had shoehorned
myself into the
swimsuit.
Then I realized that no one would know if I used two lockers and split
my stuff between them. So I
selected two lockers, near each other.
I put my (admittedly large) shoulder bag, etc. in one locker.
Then I put all my other stuff, mostly clothes, in the other one.
Set both keys to the same combination.
It worked like a charm.
Until this Thursday, when I chose two lockers that happened to be one
over the other. My purse was
in the lower locker. And
when I tried to re-enter the combination, it wouldn’t work.
Obviously, I hadn’t been able to see the keypad easily, since it
was on a level with my knee, and may have missed a key.
In any case, I couldn’t get the locker open for love or money.
The Good News: I could get
into the locker that contained my clothes.
I would not have to squelch my way, wearing a Very Extra Large
dripping swimsuit, wrapped up in a soggy beach towel, out to the Front
Desk. Instead I could peel
out of the wet swimsuit and be fully dressed when I confessed that I
could not get into the locker containing my purse.
There were two actual people at the Front Desk.
They both smiled and proclaimed, “No problem!”
And looked in the drawer for the Magic Key that would open the
locker. Evidently, this was
not the first time this had happened.
However, they could not find the Magic Key.
Undeterred, they promptly called
Housekeeping.
Then they directed me to go back to the Locker Room to meet with
Housekeeping, who would take care of the problem.
Housekeeping, in the form of a cheerful young woman I had seen
delivering towels earlier, got there ahead of me.
I pointed out the errant locker and she promptly applied the
Magic Key, which look for all the world like a plastic
wrench handle, with
some holes in it. She
slipped it under the bottom of the locker door, slid it up until it came
in contact with the locking mechanism and Presto!
The door popped open.
I thanked her profusely and she cheerfully bustled away, no doubt
appreciating a nice break from delivering towering stacks of freshly
laundered towels. And I made
a mental note to only use upper lockers from now on.
The lower ones are
jinxed.
Love, as always,
Pete
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