Went to the gym again this morning. I don’t have any heavy physical work to do anymore, for the first time in decades, so we exercise like people do. Except it’s not like people do.
Wifie and me go together. We row, and lift weights, and cycle, and she uses the bingo wing machine while I do what are called woodchoppers. Honestly, I should just get a job digging ditches, and my wife should take in laundry.
It was later than usual when we got there, so we got to see a different crop of human flotsam and jetsam. No matter what time it is, everyone just sits on the machines and fiddles with their phones instead of doing much of anything. Then they drink out of giant binkie bottles, which I’m sure are filled with some form of stupid water, or that cough syrup stuff mixed with caffeine that makes people skydive and race motorcycles or maybe kitesurf with logos on their spandex.
The crowd today was much younger than we’re accustomed to earlier in the morning (it was nine-ish). It’s mostly girls who travel in little packs. Earlier on it’s old farts and gay men and people who want to shower in strange, redolent places before going to work. It’s nearly warm out these days here in Maine, so the young girls who sleep in and exercise later are finally able to shed their yoga pants and display their voluntary port wine stains to the best effect.
The teevees are everywhere, spraying us with visual sludge while we row and bike. The sound was off, thank the savior. A weird man was taking a tour of John Cougar’s bass player’s house, which for obscure reasons qualifies him for celebrity, I gather. They were very specific to call him John Cougar, not John Kroger Kruggerand, or Jack Kennedy Melonballer, or whatever he was calling himself there for a while. In any case, Jack Catamount wasn’t present.
I intuited that our F-clef hero and his consort wanted to sell their house and move to other quarters. By the look of him, it occurred to me that he might want to shop for a bed with a lid instead of a ranch house or similar crash pads. The outside of the house in question was the usual faux-colonial, bland, featureless white vinyl box somewhere in St. Louis or Kansas City or another place I’ve never been.
Then they toured the inside. Every surface on every room on the interior had been decorated with garish paint colors and defaced with alleged artwork by this shortbus polymath, and lavishly garnished with acres of ghastly mosaic tile, until the whole house looked like an extract from a drunkards’ nightmare.
The homeowner was wearing a shirt with his high school picture printed on it dozens of times in a pattern, kind of a weird flex for a guy nearing judgment by more substantial deities than cable TV hosts. After an excruciating tour of his lair, he eventually went off-camera, and then came back playing a washboard with various kazoos on bendy straws and other apparatuses for making unpleasant noises appended to it. It looked like Hannibal Lecter had designed his own bagpipes. I’ll drop to my knees this evening and thank my creator that the sound was off. The whole time, this guy’s wife stood next to him and looked dazed, which I gather is her signature move.
I eventually wandered off to lift heavy things, and push objects that didn’t want to move, and so forth, and when I returned, the real estate circus was just finishing up. The chyron informed us that for some strange, inexplicable reason, the house hasn’t sold. Yes: causes unknown, a stark mystery wrapped in an enigma and buried in a Folger’s can in the yard. Unknowable.
It occurred to my wife and I, on the way home, that we’re the last sane people on earth. It also occurred to us, that by the dictionary definition, that makes us the weirdos. I think we can bear up under the shame of it.
[Update: Thanks to Gerry for his continuing support of this website. It is greatly appreciated]
{Additional Update: Thanks to an anonymous contributor for their kind words and their generous donation to our tip jar. It’s greatly appreciated]
3 Responses
Here in TinyTown™ in NW Wyoming our workout place is a gym in a basement. There is a complete dearth of TV’s, but they do play the local “classics” rock station to drown out the heaving of breath of the users. My wife and I show up on the same three days every week at more or less the same time, and so there are a handful of regulars who do the same. It’s nice to be able to say, “Hi” and talk about the weather, or the tourons (tourist/moron) who got themselves killed in Yellowstone while attempting to ride a buffalo while taking a selfie.
It has not ceased to amaze me that of the people who just kind of wander in-and-out the vast majority of them spend at least 90% of their time staring at their palms. My wife and I spend 45 minutes there, begrudging every minute (we’re in our late 60’s) that we have to spend trying to stave off the inevitable decay of our bodies. We move from machine to machine to the weight benches, and about the only “break” either of us takes is when we’ve finished one of three circuits and start a new one, and have to walk from one end of the gym to the other, hit the drinking fountain, and start all over again. My wife simply gains a pleasant glow while I sweat like an iced glass on a hot, humid day.
I swear that most of these people are simply showing up so that they can tell themselves that, “I went to the gym this morning”, but have not so much as put a hair out of place while doing the one or two sets of whatever that is all that they do. I’m also sure that they feel so self-important that failing to connect with the rest of the universe via silicon would be seen as a betrayal to their own image. I don’t know why they bother coming in if they’re just going to sit there and either text or talk while occupying a machine that somebody else (me, fer instance) is waiting for.
There was one guy this week who came in, did one set of pull-downs on the machine (at 40 pounds) and then quite literally sat on the machine’s bench for the next half-hour, talking on his got-verdamnt phone. I skipped it for my first two circuits, and then finally asked him if he’d mind if I did a quick set while he was taking his break. No, he just held up his hand, but his friend on hold, and told me, “I’ll be done here in a minute”. Still sitting there when we left the gym, still doing nothing.
I’m still trying to think of an appropriate punishment in one of Dante’s circles of hell for people who occupy the only machine in the gym without using it. Maybe the same “special hell” as that used for child molesters and people who talk in the theater (Firefly ref.).
Hi Blackwing- “Touron” is a glorious turn of phrase. In Maine, we have straphangers, flatlanders, and Massholes, and now I know that in Wyoming, you have tourons. My day is complete.
There sure were a lot of smiles and giggles in this one. You outdid yourself.