Swimming and Mr Rude who nearly ruined my day

I'd promised the kids that they could have a treat this weekend as they'd been really good and they chose swimming. We always go to The Triangle in Burgess Hill ... although it's further away than our local one, it's so much better and we always have more fun. I invited my mum to come along too - she'd had a steroid injection in her leg on Friday so the gentle exercise in the pool was perfect for her!

So there we are stood there in the queue to pay. Megan starts talking about the fact that I had put her hair in plaits and I said that it was because of going swimming and it would be easier to brush afterwards. I pointed to my own hair and said "I didn't even bother brushing mine today because of swimming" .... a perfectly normal mother/daughter conversation ... well you'd think, but apparently the bloke in front of us in the queue (who had 2 children of his own with him) didn't think so. He completely butted into our conversation and said to me "yeah love I think we can ALL see that." I was bubbling over inside and positively seething, but instead I gritted my teeth, decided not to make a public show of myself and said nothing. BUT THEN he grinned to himself and said "yeah umm the words hedge, dragged and backwards come to mind."

OMG HOW ANGRY WAS I????? This bloke who I had never met before in my life is standing there INSULTING me in front of my children (and his too). I was so tempted. SO tempted to just swing one at him. I didn't .... but that doesn't mean I wasn't VERY VERY tempted. I simply stood there and said absolutely nothing.

Now I need to point out here that my hair WAS brushed but I hadn't exactly spent half an hour with my GHD straighteners before going swimming!! I hadn't applied perfect makeup - in fact I wasn't wearing a scrap of makeup - not even waterproof mascara because I was going SWIMMING!! Okay I wasn't wearing my best clothes and high heels either - I was wearing a pair of black boot leg trousers and a plain black t-shirt with my trainers (easy to pull on and off while also trying to dress small children in a changing cubicle!) but I looked reasonable!!! In no way did I look like a piece of **** that had been dragged through a hedge backwards and in no way did he have the right to speak to me like that!!

Megan could see that I was extremely upset at this point and she'd watched the whole thing happening. She asked me if I was okay and I replied (loud enough for the bloke to hear) that no I wasn't really okay because I didn't like people who were so rude and I simply turned my back on him. Enormous brownie points to me for doing the right thing!! I was still seething inside and although I SO wanted to say/do something, I was determined not to turn it into a massive public spectacle in front of my children!

A bit later in the pool I spotted Mr Rude and pointed him out to Megan. I'd said to her that I'd wanted to thump him because he'd really hurt my feelings and upset me but that it would have been the wrong thing to do. I also said to her that he really wasn't setting a very good example to his children by the way he was so rude to someone in front of them.

Anyway we all have a nice splashing time in the pool, round the rapids and sliding down the flumes until my mum sidles up to me and said "Ummm Megan just poked Mr Rude!" I burst out laughing!! She did what?! I went and found her and apparently she gave him a nice sharp dig in the ribs under the water then swam off and he hadn't known it was her. I asked her why she did it - her answer was "I felt like it!" I told her that she really shouldn't have done it and she said she did it because he was nasty to me. Bless her little heart. I didn't make a big deal of it because of the circumstances around it and I did talk to her about it again later, but I had to smile. Apparently it was a nice elbow in the ribs!!