Dropping The Soap

Well, after a late dinner tonight, I went to the gym, since I'd not worked out yet this week and have a sort of goal to not let Wednesday go by without a workout.

I hit the showers, which consist of a row of frosted glass dividers without curtains. As I prefer, and as is often the case, I had them to myself...until I noticed another guy out of the corner of my eye arriving at the stall right next to mine. I just went about my merry business, humming a song I'd been listening to on my MP3 player.

Maybe it was my being tired or the fact that I actually got a pretty good workout that left some muscles feeling nicely abused and temporarily weakened, but my soap made a break for it. It shot up from my hand as it scrubbed my shoulder and flew in an impressive trajectory away from me and into the area outside the stalls. As it flew away, I experienced one of those slow-motion moments as I reached to grab the flying soap mid-flight to no avail. It hit the floor at my stall's opening, bounced a good foot, and skidded sideways, stopping a couple of feet in front of the stall of the guy next to me.

In a flash, I ran through my options:

• Play it cool and leave the soap. I'd just rinse, dry, and throw my towel on and grab the soap on my way out.
  
• Wait and see if he reaches a foot out and scoots it over with his foot.
  
• Put my towel on to go grab it so as to not seem like I was deliberately trying to give anyone a show or welcome any advances (I figured dropping soap was at least as much of an invitation as dropping keys).

After considering for about a second, I just said a light-hearted, "Oh come on," to express my amused frustration to any witnesses, and I stepped out of my stall over to my soap, picked it up with a comically exasperated gesture (for effect), and quickly went back to my stall. There. That wasn't so bad, even though I was pretty sure he'd been facing out when I did it and probably saw the whole amusing display.

I went back to showering, and the guy next to me turned his water off, grabbed his towel, and as he passed my stall he said to me, "That was funny." I laughed and nodded over my shoulder.

I finished up and went back to my locker. Guess whose locker was directly adjacent to mine? Yup. I sort of laughed and said, "Excuse me, I'm gonna get around you 'cause I'm right next to you here." He smiled politely and said, "Funny. Of all the lockers in this place..." Indeed. I hope the powers that be were having a good laugh at my expense.

I gave a chuckle and said, "I promise I don't make a habit of dropping the soap in the locker room..." You know, as soon as I'd said it, I realized sometimes a smile and a shrug is better than saying too much.

*smile and shrug*