Fitness Angst

There’s nothing more annoying than someone else invading your private place. Now, as to how you define what your “private place” is, well, I’d say it depends. For instance, I can say that the condo unit I rent and pay for on my own is my private place, but my mom would highly disagree. She forces me to share it with my two NBSB (no-boyfriend-since-birth) sisters, which is, oftentimes, a deterrent to me, since I can’t just invite anyone over any time. It’ll be kinda awkward if I suddenly bring a guy I’ve newly met from a café over to the condo, and the sisters are there. It’ll be doubly awkward if they tell our mom embarrassing situations such as one cited above.

I also consider the bathroom a sacrosanct space. I mean, who’d want a person entering the restroom when you’re doing the number two??? But there’s a HUGE difference between a private bath/restroom and a public one. I don’t know about you, but I’d sure as hell don’t want to anger a “big momma” look-alike if she wants to use the vanity mirror above the sink I’m using – hence, I’d only take a few seconds to rinse my hands with soap and water and get out of her way as soon as possible. My mama did teach me some manners when I was growing up. One of her first lessons was: don’t deliberately try and piss off anyone who’s bigger, meaner, and bitchier than you are. I took that lesson to heart. Somehow, though, other mamas never managed to teach their daughters this very valuable lesson.

All this angst about “respect for others’ private space” grew out of my frustration with my co-members in the gym that I’ve recently signed up with. Now, this isn’t one of those cheap neighbourhood gyms that I’m now a “proud” member of – in fact, it’s one of the largest and most well-known ones worldwide (its advertisements even have Hollywood celebrities as spokes-models, e.g., Matt Damon, Vin Diesel, The Rock, Janet Jackson, and so on and so forth), so I had some pretty damn high expectations.

I’m cool with the equipment, the trainers, and such. But it’s just those other gym users that make me want to pull their hair out strand by strand.

Think about this scenario: you want to use a particular gym equipment to exercise a targeted area of your body – let’s say, your abs. So, you go to the ab machine, right? But there’s someone there – a perky little woman with abs flat enough to grill porterhouse steaks on is already using it. You think, “Fine. I’ll come back in five minutes…” Five minutes later, you go back. She’s still there, so you try to go find something else on your exercise programme to do. You go back again after another ten minutes, but SHE’S STILL FRIGGING THERE! And the thing is, she’s only used the machine at least twice (each set of ab crunches takes only about a minute to do) in the last 15 minutes! The rest of the time, she just sits on the machine and stare into space!!!!!!!!!!!!! WTF?! And, it’s the gym’s policy and the general users’ unspoken rule to not disturb anyone who’s doing his/her thing on the exercise floor. What are you gonna do? Skip the whole ab thing, and hope to god that you can make up for it the next time you go to the gym.

Now imagine yourself hitting the showers after an hour-long gym routine. Just ignore the greedy people who have dumped their clothes in the changing rooms (even though they’re not inside the rooms to change yet). Strip naked beside your locker (in full view of the unkind vanity mirrors), and cross your fingers that no one whispers about your abs that didn’t get freakin’ exercised that morning. Get a quick shower (coz you never know what cooties you may be getting from the shower area’s floor) and change. Now, try and use one of the two hair dryers that the gym has provided for its members. Go ahead, try. No luck? Ah, that’s probably because two gal-pals are still using both hair dryers while chatting up a storm. Don’t even bother waiting. They’re still gonna be there 30 minutes later, blow drying their super-mega-extra-unconditioned-long-thick-unruly hair while talking about how unsatisfied they are in their sex lives. On another day, you might get lucky and snatch up some precious time to quietly blow dry your own hair before you go to work. Pray to whatever-god-there-may-be that there’s not another person sitting on the chair next to you, drying her own hair. For sure, at some point during her drying routine, she’d whip her hair back and hit you in your face dead-on. Not a nice thing to experience. Believe me - I’ve got a few “hair whiplash” scars on my face that I’m still suffering from.

All these horror stories are making me feel ill about the thought of going to the gym. But, then I think, I spent a whole month’s hard-earned salary on this damned gym membership, and it’s going to be a hard pill to swallow if I stop now. So, fitness angst aside, I’ll huff-and-puff my way back to that gym, and by-george, you’ll see me pushing that skinny bitch off of the ab machine, dumping my stuff in the changing room before I even hit the gym, and pulling the hair of the next girl who uses the communal hair dryer for longer than 15 minutes. It’s plain ethics, man, just ethics.