Life in the Laugh Lane: No key, no clothes and no dignity

Written by Bill Rifkin
Thursday, 19 January 2012 01:00

I lost a key the other day, but the real problem was I was naked.

I go to a gym, and lost the key to the lock on my locker. After a brief engagement in actual exercise, the disrobing begins. After the hot tub I stow my bathing suit in the locker and hit the steam room and sauna wearing nothing but my bravest smile (and usually a strategically placed towel). I realized I forgot my towel, but, if I can stand the other "gorillas in the mist," they'll have to tolerate me. So I enjoy a good shvitz, and realize once I saunter up to my locker that I don't have my key with me.

Now you may ask, upon where on my person do I keep the key once I am sans bathing suit. Since my children attend the local schools, and I write this column under my real name, I cannot answer at present. The fact that I am ambidextrous and double jointed may or may not be of relevance.

One has never truly realized what naked means until prevented from undoing the condition. I had to look for the key. Even the most nonchalant locker room men do not take too kindly to someone who appears to be "looking" around too closely. The shower I used was occupied. What is the etiquette here? Do I ask him if I may enter and look around? Do I explain that I need to use this particular shower when he is done? I decided to skip the shower for now and look in the steam room.

It was fully occupied. With dense mist rendering visibility minimal I am forced to announce that I have lost my key and might I poke around a bit. Obviously, "poke around" may not have been the ideal choice of words. Everyone was gracious and searched the sitting area for the key. It was left for me, as the idiot du jour, to get down on hands and knees to search the floor. I left empty-handed, but not without mental pictures that will take years of therapy to erase.

The shower was now free but, alas, no key. While the steam room at least gave the illusion of dignity via mist, the sauna was clear and cloudless with perfect visibility. After again explaining to a group of sweaty naked men that I "had to search every nook and cranny" (why these involuntary word choices?), they obliged me. Still no key.

Well, by now I figured it was down a drain or in some crevice that even I was not willing to search. The only thing left was to hope that they gym had lock cutters, meaning that I was not the first moron to find myself in this situation. I sent a clothed Good Samaritan to ask at the front desk. While waiting, a back-up plan evolved in my head. It went something like me (naked) asking a fellow locker room denizen if I could use his cell phone to call my wife at home and ask her to drive to the gym with some clothes; tell her that I had my reasons, and that I would explain later. Imagine if she wasn't home and I had to leave a message on the machine and wait or worse yet, had to ask one of my kids to "track down Mommy and tell her that Daddy says he is naked at the gym and needs some clothes."

Thankfully, the gym did indeed have lock cutters. I was grateful, but most men would agree that standing nude next to a guy employing powerful cutting sheers is "uncomfortable" with "strategic" placement of the hands seemingly automatic as the razor sharp blades snap violently through the lock. The key wasn't even in the locker — it had truly disappeared. Naturally, I am strictly a combination-lock guy from now on.