"for what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn."
I haven’t worked out much since graduating in May, so I’ve decided to join a gym for a month before I start school. Paying for the membership is also more of an incentive to actually use it. I used to go there every once in a while when home for extended vacations. It’s a peaceful place with soothing new age music, meditation paths, a smoothie bar, massages, etc. Of course like any gym, it also has the weight room, indoor track, basketball courts, and aerobics classes. The point is: it provides an atmosphere where you don’t care how you look.
There are quite a few characters in this seemingly peaceful environment. When I went to renew my membership, a guy who couldn’t have been more than a couple of years older than I am snickered and remarked at how long ago my last visit was. I got a little ticked off that he’d judge people by their gym attendance, especially since he wasn’t in tip-top shape himself. Besides, going to college will do that to your attendance record. Then there’s your typical creepy trainer whose attention is always drawn from his client while he checks out any female in the proximity and tries to catch her eye (or her derriere).
The most disturbing part of the gym, though, has to be the girls’ locker room. I associate girls’ locker rooms with the most likely place for an adolescent male to visit if he were invisible. Well that boy wouldn’t want to frequent this ladies’ locker room. First, the gym’s membership is about 70% middle age and elderly folk. Elderly people have almost no inhibitions, especially when it comes to their bodies. So the locker room is bound to have at least one clammy, nude, overweight grandmother sitting on a stool (which you might’ve set your bag on pre-workout before shoving it into a narrow locker) after peeling out of her swimsuit. Instead of the mild embarrassment that one might experience at bumping into someone naked, one has to resist the urge to gag. I know this physical state will eventually happen to us all, but there are not many who’d actually want to see it.
Then there are the huffers and puffers. I’m not talking about the guys with necks bigger than their heads, who lift more than they can handle and, therefore, make painful over-exertion noises. I’m talking about the frumpy older women who stand right next to you and literally breathe down your neck as you finish your second set on a machine. Their workout is so rigidly planned that they can’t possibly find any other machine in the giant weight room to use while they wait for your machine. Then when you cut short the number of repetitions to be nice, they give you a disgruntled look and proceed to crash all the settings of the machine to fit their taste. My mother brightly pointed out a man staring vacantly into space while at a machine. I noticed at least three women eyeing the machine greedily. She naively thought the man was meditating, but I corrected her. He was simply trying to piss everyone else off. Good for him.
I guess this has been a long enough tirade about the gym, but I do enjoy the ridiculous in others.
There are quite a few characters in this seemingly peaceful environment. When I went to renew my membership, a guy who couldn’t have been more than a couple of years older than I am snickered and remarked at how long ago my last visit was. I got a little ticked off that he’d judge people by their gym attendance, especially since he wasn’t in tip-top shape himself. Besides, going to college will do that to your attendance record. Then there’s your typical creepy trainer whose attention is always drawn from his client while he checks out any female in the proximity and tries to catch her eye (or her derriere).
The most disturbing part of the gym, though, has to be the girls’ locker room. I associate girls’ locker rooms with the most likely place for an adolescent male to visit if he were invisible. Well that boy wouldn’t want to frequent this ladies’ locker room. First, the gym’s membership is about 70% middle age and elderly folk. Elderly people have almost no inhibitions, especially when it comes to their bodies. So the locker room is bound to have at least one clammy, nude, overweight grandmother sitting on a stool (which you might’ve set your bag on pre-workout before shoving it into a narrow locker) after peeling out of her swimsuit. Instead of the mild embarrassment that one might experience at bumping into someone naked, one has to resist the urge to gag. I know this physical state will eventually happen to us all, but there are not many who’d actually want to see it.
Then there are the huffers and puffers. I’m not talking about the guys with necks bigger than their heads, who lift more than they can handle and, therefore, make painful over-exertion noises. I’m talking about the frumpy older women who stand right next to you and literally breathe down your neck as you finish your second set on a machine. Their workout is so rigidly planned that they can’t possibly find any other machine in the giant weight room to use while they wait for your machine. Then when you cut short the number of repetitions to be nice, they give you a disgruntled look and proceed to crash all the settings of the machine to fit their taste. My mother brightly pointed out a man staring vacantly into space while at a machine. I noticed at least three women eyeing the machine greedily. She naively thought the man was meditating, but I corrected her. He was simply trying to piss everyone else off. Good for him.
I guess this has been a long enough tirade about the gym, but I do enjoy the ridiculous in others.