Oh! A Gime!

I am confident that Queen Elizabeth sweats. I am equally confident that she does not grunt like a baboon or groom her nose hairs in the gym. She manages to keep her composure at the age of 82 years young. So what is your excuse you ill-mannered sack of crap? I will never for the life of me understand why people find it acceptable to behave so disgustingly when they are working out. At any rate, I will not let that deter me from my purpose of cataloging the depths to which human civilization has sunk.

I think it only fitting to begin with the beginners. I know you have seen these individuals. They stroll in chattering with two or three of their flabbiest, most irritating friends, all decked out in matching track suits (or for men, those ridiculous over-sized basketball shorts that hang down to your ankles because they are designed for folks much taller and more athletic than you). They then gather around some complicated, and inevitably popular machine and stare at it like they’re in an art museum. You’ll notice them hide their confusion by continuing to chatter as they sit backwards in the seat, put their hands tentatively on the foot rest and thrust outward just hard enough to give themselves a hernia. Eventually they roll onto the floor clutching their side and crawl over to the next machine you want to use so that they can further injure themselves while also keeping you from getting on with your workout. Ordinarily, I’d say killing two birds with one stone is great, unless you happen to be one of the birds.

The beginners are followed closely behind, literally, by a hoard of wife-beater wearing steroid junkies who love the gym more than life and themselves more than the gym. They identify themselves as members of this genus by pausing after every three reps to check themselves out in the mirror. Adding to the freakishness is the fact that they perform this ritual in pairs.

“Wow, Franz,” says Hans, “that last set really makes the hairs on your arm look especially buff.”

“Thanks Hans,” says Franz, “if you check me out from a forty-five degree angle I hardly look pudgy at all in this wife beater.”

While I find this whole production odd, I would not necessarily commit these folks just for a bit of delusional body dysmorphia. What is clinically nutso, however, is when the same individuals press themselves right up against the mirror to explore the various orifices of their face. I know you know what I’m talking about so you can just take your guffaw and muffle it. It continues to baffle me that people who take no care to groom themselves at home, suddenly feel a social pressure to inspect their faces for deer tics while they are in the gym. I suppose what I’m really asking is why are they susceptible to one form of shaming and not another? Surely there’s plenty of shame to go around.

Last but not least, we have the screamers. This is a subset of the steroid junkies who manage to be irritating both during and between exercises. Now it is worth mentioning that in whatever gym you frequent, no one is going to the Olympics. They are probably not even going to make it past the Krispy Kreme next door. The only point then of their loud panting and vociferating seems to be to draw attention to their narcissistic mirror-loving selves and their heterosexual gym partners. While I try not to get graphic, I hope you’ll humor me with a little exercise. Imagine that these grunting primates are sitting on a toilet rather than a weight bench. If you’re as disgusted as I am, you’ll take advantage of the next available opportunity to drop an unfortunately placed free weight on one of their hormone swollen feet.

Back that thang up. . .

. . .at your peril. Since we all seem to be having so much trouble understanding the basic tenets of human decency, maybe we can start by taking a lesson from the machines. Have you ever noticed how trucks, tractors, forklifts, boats, barges and even the occasional dirigible all make a beeping noise when they back up? Why do you think that is? (I’ll pause while you let that sink in). So it turns out that this irritating chirping has a valuable function, alerting whatever detritus has been stashed behind said object to get out of the damn way. Ok so that’s one for the mechanical engineers (licking finger and gesturing to make a vertical line in the air).

In fact, I dare say the beeping feature is so useful that the science club even has a leg up on the almighty on this point. This is because you, clunky and mechanical though you are, do not possess such a talent. When you back up, no one sees it coming. Your generous hind-quarters turn you into a human wrecking ball and woe betide your mother’s porcelain kittens if they should be in your path. You have knocked over drinks, trampled on toes, and even ruined a few priceless antiques all for want of a horn and a sense of direction. Actually, if we’re honest with ourselves, the real problem is that you are completely oblivious to your surroundings. This has become so common a theme that I’ve given up trying to get you to change.

What would please me to no end, however, would be for you to stop randomly backing into stuff. At the lunch counter, the water fountain, even getting tickets for a move, just turn and walk forward. It’s that simple. Indeed even if you are from New Jersey, or are Zoolander, you have no excuse because I am completely indifferent as to whether you turn right or left (insert lame political pun here). What I cannot abide is the idea that you are so egoistic that you think what you cannot see does not exist. You have no idea whether there is someone behind you and therefore, in the wheel inside a ball inside your empty skull, there must not be. So there you go arms a’flailin’, backpack bustin’, treating the world as though there weren’t 6 billion other people in it who might not have gotten the memo that you’re entitled to go lumbering around wherever you please.


As I foreshadowed in the last paragraph, it is worth mentioning the exponential irritation that the addition of a backpack adds to this situation. Given that you do not even have functional control over the appendages that are attached to you, I cannot comprehend how you could expect to manage a contraption that adds such heft and girth to your already unmanageable frame. But I suppose you have proven me right yet again, because you do not expect to manage yourself at all. Instead, you expect to bump and push and maneuver through whatever objects, non-living or otherwise, that happen to be situated between you and the precise spot on the floor you have selected to place your feet. Part of me has to admire that kind of confidence and determination. Another, less forgiving part of me thinks there’s a special place in hell for people like you where the devil uses his Jansport to beat you to a pulp.