No Persons With Ear Discharge Are Allowed in the Pool!

Today, I pretended that I was a fancy, rich tourist (I stopped short of putting on a fake accent, though I considered it) at my posh hotel in downtown Vancouver. I allowed the bellhop to hold my cane as I (with the style, grace and charm you would expect) entered and exited a taxi. I strolled  down Robson Street, keeping my elbows up to avoid being knocked over by bag-laden tourists, armed with pistachio and Toblerone gelato (fancy!), which was an adventure in itself because I couldn't walk with my cane and eat at the same time and so resorted to holding the gelato cup up to my face every few minutes to lick at the gelato, which resulted in a nose full of green gelato and a near spoon-in-eye impaling. 

Unfortunately, the sidewalks on Robson Street are narrow and I am not yet at the speed of most foot traffic, so my mom and I caused quite the pedestrian traffic jam. It was kind of amusing to watch men in expensive suits power-strutting up the sidewalk, weaving past dogs and tourists and sandwich-board signs, totally in the zone and ready to rock the shit out of some business deal, before coming to a screeching halt right behind me. One guy was tailgating me so badly that I could feel his breath on my neck every time he sighed in impatience. You could almost hear him weighing the options of whether he was allowed to push me out of the way. That's me: Arley the walking pylon: inspiring rage in venture capitalists since 2009.

My favorite part of high living, however, is reading the extensive warning signs on the ultra-posh pool. There's the standard "no diving, no running, no horseplay," but I love how the fancier the pool, the more elaborate the restrictions. My favorite: "No persons with ear discharge are allowed in the pool!" I have been sitting here wondering exactly what ailment would cause "ear discharge," since in my experience ear infections just hurt like hell. I've had a lot of bizarre health problems in my life (super mono! Avascular necrosis! Some weird strawberry virus I got as a result of working in a petting zoo and which prompted several concerned phone calls from the good people at Health Canada's Infectious Disease Department), but I've never had anything leak out of my ears. Is this the result of vacations to third-world countries? Is this a side-effect of some designer form of ecstasy? Rich people must get different diseases.