Observations in Miniature: People in the Gym IV

If you see yourself amongst these people it might be time to change your gym habits.


Speeding Treadmill Woman -– Hello, is there anybody home under that igloo of sweat clothes you have on? Exactly how fast is that treadmill of yours turned up to? You have to hold onto the safety bar to keep from flying off the back and every five or six steps you slip and are running on your knees. Here’s a clue. Don’t eat an entire fucking cheesecake and a bag of Grandma Utz’s potato chips and then expect to come into the gym and do some insane marathon of a workout and get rid of the extra 6000 calories you just ingested. You’re built like Marlon Brando not because you don’t exercise enough. You look like him because you take in enough calories to sustain every sea fairer that ever sailed in the Spanish Armada.

Ambiguous she/he – Okay, I’m not going to ask. I think I saw you come out of the women’s locker room but my thoughts are that you might have just walked into the wrong locker room to start with? I’m I right? Can you give me a hint? No, I’m not trying to compete with you I don’t even know what you are. Don’t dress in Chuck Taylors and men’s basketball shorts and cut your hair down so you look like Pee Wee Herman if you’re a woman. That tattoo on your arm does that say I love Jean? That’s no help. Why did you just get pissed off at me and say I'm a male chauvinist while I was talking to that woman at the water fountain? Do you have a crush on her? Do you have a crush on me? Do you have a crush on the water fountain? Someone somewhere has the answer and please don’t venture into the Twilight Zone of your sexuality and threaten to pull your pants down. My heart couldn’t take that.

White Sista Worker Outer – I don’t know if you’ve looked in the mirror in the last 25 years but I’m going to let you in on a little secret…YOUR WHITE! If I hear you say “shizzle to da shiznit” one more time I’m going to blow the gym up. While you’re on the stair stepper reading Ebony did you notice that no one in that magazine looked like YOU! No? No matter how much time you spend in the tanning bed or how many hair extensions you glue to your scalp you aren’t going to be black. Your ass is as flat as freezer door and no matter how many reps on the Butt Blaster you do you’re never going to get that elusive ghetto onion you’re after. I have an idea. Pretend for a moment you’re white. How does it feel? Kind of weird isn’t it? Now imagine that both your parents were white and all your grandparents and all your great grandparents and so forth back through history were white because, well, they were. Now guess what that means? YOUR FUCKING WHITE.

Farm-aceutical Hay Seed– (Is this guy just at my gym?) Did grandpa Zeke drop you on your oblong head when you were an infant because you have to be the stupidest person I’ve ever met? Really, you work on the family farm and dip into the supply of veterinary steroids? The zits on your back the size of prunes were my first clue that you might be experimenting with Gus the Mules hormone therapy medication, the second would be that your eyes are so yellow with jaundice that it looks like someone pissed in your ear hole and filled up your hollow head. I’m not stronger than you because I take more goat thyroid than you. Believe it or not I’ve never opened up an animal’s medicine cabinet. I’m stronger because I exercise the muscle between my ears. Yeah, that atrophied thing in your skull that rattles around like a petrified dinosaur turd is your brain and you should start using it before you kill yourself with the next injection of pig growth hormone.

Rico Suave – You did not just put some foreign fucking substance in your hair and then hastily comb it back with your hand did you? Because something wet just hit me on the arm and if you cherish your machismo you will go get me a paper fucking towel and some disinfectant and wipe my arm down this instant. And after you’re done lying on a bench clean the grease stain up that your head has left there. And don’t talk in Spanish at 5000 rpms and then point in my direction and laugh I just might mistake you for a barbell and try to put a 45 pound plate on your head. Comprende? Good now turn down your MP3 player that rumba music is driving me insane. And by the way in case you haven’t noticed, which obviously you haven’t because you just checked again, you look exactly the same as you did three seconds ago when you looked in the mirror.


Hyperactive Aerobics Instructor – One and two and one and two and one and two and…Okay, stop it. Slow the fuck down. We get it you’re peppy. You did not just do a split on top of the Gatorade machine did you? Where’s the off switch? It’s good to have energy but when you get home and have sex by sitting on your husband with two and one half pound dumbbells in each hand and count out reps each time you pump up and down it’s time to admit you have a workout addiction. Wipe that grin off your face. Nobody is really that happy. That false bravado and forced giddiness were just what your cheerleading coach in high school ordered but the older you get the less and less cute it is. I would suggest hanging out at your local biker bar. Drink beer. Learn to fart on command and scowl. That’s it baby’s got a new tattoo. Did you just say cocksucker? Great. Welcome back to the human race.