When All Else Fails - Pool Story!

How about a pool story?  I usually get a good pool story every couple of months.  I'll probably tell my sponsor about it later on, probably more than once - he's a little forgetful at this point.  He'll get to say "Principles before personalities" which is one of the things he tells me all the time, a strong indicator that I suck at it.   

There's this little old man that shows up at the pool from time to time.  He does some walking and he also does a hilarious imitation of a back stroke - he looks like a baby bird trying to peck its way out of an egg - where he takes up both sides of whatever lane he's hogging.  I almost ran headlong into him a few weeks back when he jumped into the lane I was using without giving me a heads up.  I could be more aware of my surroundings, I guess, but I have on befogged goggles and mostly I'm trying not to drown or strangle for lack of oxygen.  I don't mind sharing a lane in the least but please alert me so that we don't conk heads.  I was a little pissed.  Two men swimming in opposite directions running into each other is not in my exercise routine, and I've done it a couple of times.  It's no fun.

Yesterday, as I was enjoying a post-swim soak in the hot tub, I watched a friend have a confusing conversation with the bird back-stroke guy about who owned which towel.  The towels were close shades of pewter or beige or something.  Eventually, they got it sorted out. Always the funny man I suggested to my friend that he needed an interior decorator if he wanted to be sure that he got the right towel.  He leaned over the hot tub and said that bird guy likes to use the end hook so he just moves anything that may already be there - towels, gym bags, goggles - and hangs up his own stuff.  My buddy didn't exactly remember what color towel he brought.  He seemed a little pissed - there are like 45 hooks in the pool, most of them empty.

Here's where I come in. . . 

There are 8 showers in the locker room and 8 hooks, leading one to believe that each shower user gets one hook and one hook only.  Nobody gets 2 hooks and 3 hooks is right out.  However, if one should find no hooks available one would be within one's rights to bitch up a blue streak unless maybe someone left something by mistake on one of the hooks, and that stuff could just be dumped on the floor or pitched into a garbage pail - if you can't remember to take your shit with you then maybe you should stay out of my shower room.  When I got into the showers the room was completely empty so I took two hooks, an extravagance that seemed reasonable given the lack of shower-ers.  A few minutes later, shampoo running into my eyes, I see bird man holding my gym bag through the translucent curtain, asking: "Is this yours?"  I just looked at him, debating whether or not to point out that there wasn't anyone else in the fucking room and could he please replace my fucking gym bag?

"Yes?" he pressed, busily rearranging my towel and my gym bag on one hook so he could use the shower right next door and claim the extra hook that I piggishly had taken, a hook which in fact belonged to the shower he was preparing to use.  I had to hold my tongue.  I was trampling on my own shower room rules and had no right to complain, even though the guy reminded me of someone coming into a completely empty movie theater and taking the seat right next to yours.  Yeah, the seat IS empty but really?

I have no idea what the message is here.  Send me a note if it makes sense to you, unless you happen to be the bird back-stroke guy.