Did she actually just say that??
Isn't the gym and the people who frequent it such an interesting sub-culture?
I'm a gym rat, and I'm not trying to exclude myself or imply that I am somehow not a part of this subculture. I go all the time. I'm the one gets annoyed at major holidays because the gyms are closed, the one who will leave late for vacation so I can squeeze in an hour before I get in the car and will be away from my precious elliptical for days on end, the one who yearns to get to the gym after work each day and loves the feeling of total exhaustion and being drenched in sweat from a good long workout.
I think I may be a bit obsessed. But I really like going to the gym after being in a chair all day staring at a computer. And I like the people who go to gyms. Just the other day, I was on a machine and a girl my age was on one next to me, and I noticed that she, like myself, was watching Braveheart on her TV. I happened to catch her eye and she said "there was never anyone hotter than Mel Gibson in this movie" and I agreed with her. Instant bonding!
I like the guys who work at the gym who are always pretending to check the machines around the cute cheerleader-types on the treadmills. I like the obsessive parents, which I may become someday, who drag their children to the gyms with them and the kids complain that they don't want to be there for an hour, and end up sitting on the stretching balls in the back watching other people's screens for entertainment.
I was never one of those kids getting dragged. I remember when me, my dad, and my older brother used to go to the gym on saturday mornings in Columbus, Ohio. I used to go and run on the treadmill and see how fast I could go on it until I thought I would fall off. And we used to play raquetball together, and go swimming. Maybe I've always been a gym rat. I used to really look forward to those days at the gym.
But I also like just random encounters that make interaction okay, if for no other reason than the united purpose everyone has by being in the same place at the same time. Same thing happens to me at the grocery store. People just naturally peruse what you put on the conveyor belt, and sometimes they say to me, "mmm that looks interesting, what is that?" and then I tell them and we chat about it and other similar food products and then I pay and am on my way. But I enjoy those little interactions.
The reasons I started writing this entry was because yesterday at the gym, I was going to clean off my machine when I was done, basking in the glow of another completed workout, ready to head home, my favorite part of the day, and I go back over to the machine and a girl has already gotten on it. I have a towel in hand and she's just hooking up her headphones.
Me: Would you like me to wipe off the machine before you get started?
Her: Uh, no that's okay.
(Pause)
Her: Unless you have AIDS....
Me: Do you ask everyone that?
Her: I guess it's fine. I don't really care about a little sweat.
Me: (stunned) ....okay then.
I didn't really think about it again until this morning. What a bizarre thing to say! (Though perhaps not as bizarre as the fat guy who decided to do a solo naked chinese firedrill around his semi-truck on the shoulder of I-64 eastbound this morning.......true story, ask my co-worker Courtney.) Anyway, I was just thinking about gyms, and about wierd things, and sometimes wierd people who are attracted to gyms. It may be that I'm just there so often that I notice the people there more than other places. But there seems to be such an interesting cross-section of Williamsburg whenever I go to a fitness center (and I've been to almost all of them in the Williamsburg area): seniors, parents and children, singles, professionals off from work, I just like to muse over the things that I see and try to think why they are. I also like to laugh and thinking about all that amuses me.
Anyway, any given day is just full of tasty little morcels like the ones you find in interactions with people, or stories about people. Variety truly is the spice of life.
I'm a gym rat, and I'm not trying to exclude myself or imply that I am somehow not a part of this subculture. I go all the time. I'm the one gets annoyed at major holidays because the gyms are closed, the one who will leave late for vacation so I can squeeze in an hour before I get in the car and will be away from my precious elliptical for days on end, the one who yearns to get to the gym after work each day and loves the feeling of total exhaustion and being drenched in sweat from a good long workout.
I think I may be a bit obsessed. But I really like going to the gym after being in a chair all day staring at a computer. And I like the people who go to gyms. Just the other day, I was on a machine and a girl my age was on one next to me, and I noticed that she, like myself, was watching Braveheart on her TV. I happened to catch her eye and she said "there was never anyone hotter than Mel Gibson in this movie" and I agreed with her. Instant bonding!
I like the guys who work at the gym who are always pretending to check the machines around the cute cheerleader-types on the treadmills. I like the obsessive parents, which I may become someday, who drag their children to the gyms with them and the kids complain that they don't want to be there for an hour, and end up sitting on the stretching balls in the back watching other people's screens for entertainment.
I was never one of those kids getting dragged. I remember when me, my dad, and my older brother used to go to the gym on saturday mornings in Columbus, Ohio. I used to go and run on the treadmill and see how fast I could go on it until I thought I would fall off. And we used to play raquetball together, and go swimming. Maybe I've always been a gym rat. I used to really look forward to those days at the gym.
But I also like just random encounters that make interaction okay, if for no other reason than the united purpose everyone has by being in the same place at the same time. Same thing happens to me at the grocery store. People just naturally peruse what you put on the conveyor belt, and sometimes they say to me, "mmm that looks interesting, what is that?" and then I tell them and we chat about it and other similar food products and then I pay and am on my way. But I enjoy those little interactions.
The reasons I started writing this entry was because yesterday at the gym, I was going to clean off my machine when I was done, basking in the glow of another completed workout, ready to head home, my favorite part of the day, and I go back over to the machine and a girl has already gotten on it. I have a towel in hand and she's just hooking up her headphones.
Me: Would you like me to wipe off the machine before you get started?
Her: Uh, no that's okay.
(Pause)
Her: Unless you have AIDS....
Me: Do you ask everyone that?
Her: I guess it's fine. I don't really care about a little sweat.
Me: (stunned) ....okay then.
I didn't really think about it again until this morning. What a bizarre thing to say! (Though perhaps not as bizarre as the fat guy who decided to do a solo naked chinese firedrill around his semi-truck on the shoulder of I-64 eastbound this morning.......true story, ask my co-worker Courtney.) Anyway, I was just thinking about gyms, and about wierd things, and sometimes wierd people who are attracted to gyms. It may be that I'm just there so often that I notice the people there more than other places. But there seems to be such an interesting cross-section of Williamsburg whenever I go to a fitness center (and I've been to almost all of them in the Williamsburg area): seniors, parents and children, singles, professionals off from work, I just like to muse over the things that I see and try to think why they are. I also like to laugh and thinking about all that amuses me.
Anyway, any given day is just full of tasty little morcels like the ones you find in interactions with people, or stories about people. Variety truly is the spice of life.
Comments