(name changed as embarrassed by it/wondering if I'm a freak).
I'm quite a fast swimmer (swimming club as child, bit of Masters swimming now and again), do front crawl and so at my local swimming pool on Saturday, went in the lane marked "medium". There were two lanes up marked "Fast" full of really fast swimmers whizzing up and down, one "Medium" and the rest of the pool was available for non lane swimming but was a bit busy.
There were two men standing at the end of the medium lane chatting when I got in, so I squeezed in past them and started swimming lengths. Pretty soon one of them swam right into me and smacked my goggles into my face, as he didn't manage to follow the lane arrows indicating up the left and down the right. He apologised and I got on with swimming.
So I had done about half of my intended 1km swim (40 lengths) when I became aware of a woman who had come in the lane stopping and standing up on the pool every time I swam past her in the opposite direction. I stopped at the end of the lane to check I was going up and down the correct sides, which I was, and kept swimming. At no point did I have any physical contact with any swimmer in the lane apart from when the man swam into me.
A couple of lengths later the man who had swam into me stood up and barred my way at the shallow end of the lane was I was about to turn. I had no choice but to stop swimming and stand up. He immediately started telling me that I had been "swimming in the middle of the lane" and to stop it and stop getting in his way. There was more than this, he went on a bit but this was the gist. I was pretty surprised, as I'm a very experienced swimmer and no-one has ever said I swim in the middle, I'm pretty sure I would be aware of this if I did or caused an accident. I said this and he started arguing, all sorts of weird stuff and I simply repeated that I had been swimming normally and using normal swimming etiquette, and that actually standing at the end of the lane blocking swimmers from turning was poor behaviour. He then said, out of the blue "I bet you have no friends". I kid you not! He also pointed out that the woman who had been stopping and had now moved into the fast lane, where being a slower swimmer, she was causing mayhem by people avoiding her, "agreed with him when he had told her". He referred to her as "a girl".
I'm afraid I was so astonished I said the first thing that came into my head, which was "Are you a sociopath?" He then said some other stuff and I said "Don't try your manipulative abusive crap with me" and swam off.
A few lengths later I stopped for a rest (he hadn't swam at all in this time and tbh he was pretty slow in the couple of lengths he had managed in all the time I had been in) and he said in a pointed way "Are you all right now?" I answered that I was fine, with the emphasis on "I" and he then said "I bet I'm younger than you".
Again, I kid you not. I said I was very surprised to hear that as I am 45 and he looked between 12-15 years older than me but to leave me alone as I was here to swim, and finished my swim and left. When I got out the pool he was waiting, but fortunately my DH was there. He approached us both and started again, pointing out my apparent flaws in swimming technique, trying to get DH on his side. DH just laughed at him. He realised he wasn't getting anywhere so eventually walked off, muttering "If you were a man it would be a different story".
Is this possibly the weirdest encounter ever in a swimming pool? What was it all about?