i walked into the changeroom and headed over to my locker. immediately, she saw me and without skipping a beat, she came over and started talking to me.
“how do these things work?” she said, in a confused and dazed manner.
i kept on walking past her, annoyed at the attempt to stop me. i only have one hour to workout at the gym… i’m a mother… a full-time working mother… the one hour every lunch is the only time i have that is dedicated entirely to me.
however, i looked at her face as i passed by and said, “well, do you have a lock?”
“no.”
“you’ll need a lock.”
“but some of them do not have locks…”
“um… no… because you bring your own lock.”
“how does this work?”
my irritation started to build. i honestly, for the life of me, could not understand how hard it was to use a locker. or perhaps, i was more annoyed that she was not getting to the point… this strange girl (and i call her girl because while she is of age to be labelled a woman, there seemed an air of immaturity that marked her more as a girl), would not ask the right questions… it was more like a guessing game.
i continued to dial my own combination on my lock. there was no sense nor need to stop what i was doing in order to help some one so obviously clueless and disoriented… to a point where it must have been her fault. fore, the way she was acting, it was as if she was the type of person who wanted anyone and everyone to answer for her…
she needed the answers handed to her on a silver platter. that was the kind of person she was. i was sure of it.
in a huff, i said to her, “you don’t need a lock but you understand that if you put your belongings in a locker without one, any valuables will not be protected.”
“but how does this work, then?”
i was dumbfounded… where had i gone wrong in explaining to her the basic principles of what a locker, in combination of a personal lock, does? i tried to listen hard to her voice… maybe something was wrong with her? was she on something? perhaps physically and/or mentally challenged? or perhaps she was new to the country and came from a place where they had no gyms nor lockers to lock their things in?
nothing. nothing in her voice gave any indication of any reason nor being of why she was having such a hard time grasping the concept.
except for the fact that she was simply, well… lacking in intelligence.
i quickly looked at her face… studied it briefly. her eyes seemed to read that she was completely lost. her face covered with adult acne… she looked young. early 20’s? maybe even a few years older.
i finally gave one last answer, in hopes it would be the right one so she could leave me alone.
“you just pull it open.”
“but how?”
“just… pull.”
she hesitantly grabbed the handle and opened it, mumbling a confused, “oh.”
i turned my back away from her. when i was ready to head off to the showers, she had already wandered over to another area, leaving the locker that she had spent so much time and energy trying to figure out ‘how it worked.’
she floated around… as lost from the first moment i saw her.
i left the gym with a slightly uneasy tremble… not truly understanding what had just happened. and for a split second, i started to doubt myself of whether what had happened was real. had she truely existed in those couple of minutes?
and as i climbed into my car, i had a vision of her moving to the other end of the change room. i stopped and drew in my breath as i realized that she wasn’t walking… but floating across the room. it was as if she was walking on air.
i turned the key in the ignition and left the underground parking lot, trying to shake the ridiculous imagination of mine, back down to earth.
