& {sometimes} WHY

This lap around the lazy-river pool, the magnifying lens is turned on me. Yes, ME, myself and I and how we three jumped to conclusions. The wrong conclusions, of course. So wrong I’m shaking my head as I write this. It all started with the Stanley IceFlow drink tumbler my daughter bought me last Christmas. I couldn’t wait to use it at the pool because it would hold more water than any of my other cups and keep it colder during the two or three hours I “aqua-walk.”

It performed like a dream! I never ran out of water before I ran out of energy or time. Like some of the other aqua-walkers, I placed it on the side of the pool so I could stop for sips on my way around without getting out to retrieve it from my swim bag. Because of its two-tone light pink and raspberry coloring, it stood out and wouldn’t get mixed up with anyone else’s cup.

All went well for several weeks

Then one day, between 9:30 and 10 a.m., I was thirsty and looked for it on my way around, but it wasn’t there. At first I thought maybe I had accidentally left it in the car or at home, so I didn’t report it that day.

I checked the car when I left the pool–even under the seats–and nothing. At home, I checked the garage and the kitchen, but no cup.

The next day I reported it at the pool’s front desk and asked if a pink Stanley cup had been turned in. The staff checked the lost and found with no luck. They asked if I knew about when and where the theft happened, and I told them. They said I could come in later when a manager was present to view security tapes.

I said I would, then proceeded to tell them I had a pretty good idea who took it. There was this older man with a battered US Navy cap who was new at the pool and had been sitting near where I sat. Usually no one sat near where I sat, and here he was encroaching on “my” territory and ogling me and my cup to boot! AND, by the time I noticed the cup missing, he had disappeared–cane, towel and all.

Then, to make him look even MORE guilty, he didn’t return for the rest of that week.

I started using a cheaper cup no one would want to steal and didn’t go back to view the tapes right away. Then when the old guy showed up at the pool the following week–what nerve!–without my cup, I decided it was time to have a look-see at those tapes.

The manager said I was not allowed to view the tapes myself but he would look at them for me. I told him where I’d been sitting, where the cup had been placed, and the approximate time in which it disappeared.

Then I returned to aqua-walk

In about 15 minutes, the manager located me in the pool and handed my cup back to me. “Don’t ask me why, but one of the guards picked it up and left it in the locker room,” he said.

Perhaps the guard was new, thought the cup was abandoned and forgot to put it in lost and found. Or perhaps the guard planned to keep it. The cup cost $35, after all. But let’s assume the former. I was just glad to have it back and thanked the manager for finding and returning it.

Regardless, I stuck to the cheaper cup the rest of the summer and saved the Stanley for gardening and road trips when it would never be out of my sight. Why tempt fate, I figured.

Two of the women I walked with and ranted to about my lost cup gently teased me. “And all this time you’ve been giving that poor old guy the stinkeye,” one said. We all laughed. Me, mostly at myself.

I decided I needed to make reparations

I started saying good morning and hi and have a nice day, and I even smiled at the older man. Chit-chat soon followed, I found out his name was Ed, and eventually we walked a few laps around the pool together and talked.

He was retired from the Navy, where he’d served since before the Vietnam War as a ship’s cook. He’d been all over the world and told wonderful stories about favorite and least favorite places. He talked slowly and deliberately, paused for my questions, and listened to my contributions. He was an excellent conversationalist. He said he was writing a book about his experiences, and I told him I, too, was a writer.

I liked him a lot, and he unknowingly brought home to me a valuable lesson I THOUGHT I’d learned in my Intro to Newswriting class sophomore year of college:

Thanks for the reminder, Ed. Hope to see you again and talk & walk more in summer 2025.

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Have you ever jumped to conclusions? Use the comments to share details…