He's older, probably late sixties. He's really, really short and overweight and is covered with scary looking moles. Hello, Kettle. I'm Pot. My, you're looking black today. He has a Hitler-style mustache (just bushier, somehow), gold hoop pirate earrings and he wears man-pris. In fact, just imagine Hitler older and fatter and friendlier and gay and there you go (though I don't think creepy-pool man is gay).

And he wants to be my buddy.
It started a couple of months ago when he shared the lap lane with me. Now, even if there are open lanes, he hops in mine. Fine, I can deal with that. But then he started getting chatty. He'd stop me mid lap to talk. I tried being polite. I really did. And after a month or so I finally just told him flat out that I couldn't keep stopping to talk because I only had a limited amount of time to exercise.
Didn't help.
So then I started moving to an open lane if he got in mine. He didn't take the hint. He followed me.
Then I got my waterproof MP3 player. I thought that maybe it would make it easier--I could totally pretend that I couldn't hear him talking to me. And I'm swimming, so it's easy to pretend I don't see him talking to me. Nope. Now he touches me to get my attention. I am not a toucher, people. I'm not a hugger. I'm not even a hand shaker (hello, germs!). So the touching was too much.
Today I snapped.
"Please, I don't like being touched. I'm here to exercise. I'm not here to socialize. I really would just prefer to swim and not talk anymore."
He said sorry. I swam off.
Then I saw him crying.
I made him cry.
Geez, people, I'm awful.
Especially because I pretended I didn't see him crying and just kept swimming.
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Be nice or I'll punch you in the taco.