Trying to Mind My Own Business

To wit and as an example . . . 

I am back swimming again after a three year abscense.  I am pleased to say that it took me a couple of strokes to confirm that it is indeed like riding a bike.  Today, Sunday, I sat in the hot tub for a few minutes to loosen up before crouching down on one side of double lane to catch the attention of a woman who was swimming there.  When she reached the end I inquired as to whether I could share the lane.  She was one of those fit, grimly determined people that make up a portion of the members of any exercise facility, sort of slogging along joylessly and vaguely dismissive of your efforts, arrogant about theirs.

"Sure," she said.  "Did you just get out of the hot tub?"

When I answered in the affirmative she added: "Maybe you should take a shower first."

Several possible responses occurred to me:

1.  Nodding and then beginning to swim, saying nothing.

2.  Responding: "Maybe you should mind your own business."

3.  Escalating the whole matter with this clarification: "Maybe you should mind your own fucking business."

4.  Asking if she worked there - no? - then wondering if she had appointed herself as the pool police.

5.  Walking ten paces to the shower and rinsing off.

I'd say that about 34% of the people who get in the pool don't rinse at all and I'd say one in twenty rinse after sitting in the hot tub.  I mean . . . you're in a hot frappe of chemicals and human wastes and sweat and then you lower yourself into a warm frappe of chemicals and human wastes and sweat so I'm not sure what the post-soak/pre-swim rinse accomplishes anyway.  I smiled wryly and walked over to the shower, turned it on, waited until she began to swim again, and then dropped into the pool next to her, hoping that the hot chemical residue would drift into her lane and cause her to develop ocular ulcers or scorch some other sensitive part of her body.

Honestly, I didn't really care.  What do I care?  It took me less than a minute to salve her outsized sense of self-righteousness and at no cost to myself.  "Seek to understand rather than be understood."