Don't Mind Me

If you were in Toronto this morning at an unearthly hour in the lobby of a swanky hotel, you might have seen a young person looking highly embarrassed. She would have been wearing a towel over top of a wet bathing suit and sandals, creating a slight puddle. She might have been me, although I'll deny it.

I was in Toronto for a business trip as a representative of the Federal government. I'm a professional with a laptop bag and a huge briefcase style purse to prove it. However, deep at heart, I am me. I can pull off being professional for about 0.5 seconds before my cover gets blown.

The hotel had a pool and I fully intended to use it. I set my alarm and got a wake-up call to ensure that I could squeeze in everything I wanted to do before I had to accomplish what I had been sent to Toronto to do. Everything went according to plan. Got up, threw on my bathing suit, realised I'd left a cover-up at home, grabbed a towel and my deck shoes and went swimming. The water was warm although shallow. This ruined my plan of perfecting my cannon ball technique. I tend to be a bit late on the tuck but I digress. Being a professional, I swum laps. It struck me as the type of thing people on businesses trips do. Laps are boring. So I hit the sauna next. When you're past the age of dumping water on the rocks to make steam, saunas are boring. Finished with the whole exercise in the morning stunt, I headed back to my hotel room.

I stuck the pass card in and there was no light. There was no iota of recognition that this room contained my stuff. I muttered, "You've got to be kidding me." And then it hit me. The only way I was going to get back into my room was to go to the lobby. You don't just go to the lobby wearing a bathing suit and a towel in the middle of Downtown Toronto at 7:30 in the morning. But it's 7:30am, no one else is crazy enough to be up and around at this time. I took a deep breath and pushed the down button to call the elevator. Let me ruin the punch line. There's lots of people around and they create lines at the lobby desk. When you're wet and waiting in line, you create puddles and generate funny looks.

The elevator arrived and there was a gentleman already inside. "You're up early," he said. "Yeah, and my pass card doesn't work. Apparently you can't take it into the sauna," I hurriedly tried to explain, "so now I've got to go the desk to get a new one." He smiled, "It's the type of thing that has to happen to you once in your lifetime." He was nice. I tried not to drip on him.