Bad gym etiquette. People are inconsiderate everywhere but when it comes to the gym the bad manners and disregard for others really sears my hiney. It has for decades. Maybe it’s the time constraints we set to work out, or perhaps the increased testosterone flow from exercise, which turns one jackass leaving a newspaper on a Nautilus machine into my desire to smash teeth and shinbones with 45lb iron plates.  I try to be mindful and respectful; it’s the way I was raised by my mother, a character trait which has been reinforced by the eternal memory of a veiny gargantua with bowling ball biceps and powerful forehead muscles. Back at the dungeon-style gym where I first took up weight lifting as a teen I’d walked away from my hundred pounds left on the bench press and got barked at from across the room, Hey punk, you better put that fuckin’ shit back on the rack! So I’ve had a nearly 30 year history of putting weights back where they belong, wiping sweat off things I’ve touched or asking anyone within a few feet of something I’d like to use if they’re already using it. And when I am finished with a treadmill, weight machine or a bench – even if I’m just between sets – I wipe it and move away to broadcast that it’s available for anyone else hoping to exercise.

    What incited this latest prolix seethe was a little encounter with the passive-aggressive discourtesy of a lady at the YMCA. A sour-pussed, middle aged barracuda with a boy’s prepschool haircut doing some mat routines near the lateral row machine. She was giving me wary glances as I approached. I saw why as I sat down: a water bottle and a book on the floor beneath the bench. Ah, place holders. No matter what anybody thinks there is no such thing as that – if you’re not actually playing with a toy then it’s fair game for all the other kids in the room. I politely slid her crap away so as not to step on any of it. Caught a scowl for that but less than a minute later the set was done and I was off before she’s even finished her business on the mat.

   Now the proper response in a public joint would have been to take note of others’ need to use the equipment and move her things along as she alternated exercises. Instead she took the route of putting her stuff on the bench itself while she stepped away to perform her goofy, pointless, Euro-style floor calisthenics. The book she had, incidentally, was titled Lift Like a Man, Look Like a Goddess. Don’t know what the book actually says to do but she was working out more like a self-involved dipshit and looking like the Goddess of Androgyny and Constipation.

   These jackasses have always existed but they’ve been proliferating alarmingly over the years, part of the general trend of Americans becoming more discourteous to each other. Only yesterday I’d put a nice, sweat-absorbing towel on an incline bench a moment before a woman put one on the flat bench next to it. The dumbbells I needed were a bit further away and while fetching them she grabbed a pair of little weights and began her routine right in front of my bench. My, my, what a douchebag. Anyway, with a pair of 75lb bells in my paws and Slipknot roaring through the headphones her maneuver hardly warranted a “I’m sorry, is it okay if you scooch a bit back towards your own goddamned pile of shit?” I just slid behind her, sat and let her decide whether or not she wanted to get broadsided when I bumped the weights from knees to my chest. She scooched voluntarily. Where does this all come from?  Illiteracy? There are signs all over the place – Please wipe down machines…No longer than 20 minutes when there are members waiting…Please return weights…Please move along when finished so others… Yet all that goes down right beneath the posters. It’s just that pervasive self-centeredness which has been infecting our culture. Dummies doing Tae-Bo flapdoodles w/ tiny weights in front of the weight racks, dimwits reading People on the fly machine, fucknuts setting up living rooms over three benches and thoughtless weenies leaving dumbbells on the rubber rugs. For fuck’s sake, if you can’t put your 30lb dumbbells back on the rack then they’re too heavy for you – don’t touch them! 

SECURITY BRIEF

   There, the rant is done! Now time for some useful tips and sane advice. Do you lock up your gear at the health club? It’s a wise thing to do; people have been robbed at all varieties of places I’ve worked out at – with the exception of the aforementioned gym-cavern back home. The rippled ogres there were a self-policing force and they had a better sense of honor to begin with. As for me, I’ve rarely used locks on lockers as I have difficulty with them. I lose keys, forget or lose the lock itself or just lock the keys inside the locker. And I have never been robbed! This could solely be the virtue of twenty-something years of dumb luck but I like to think it has more to do with my “system”. Safe Valuables are maintained is this manner: put the stuff you want to keep deep in the locker, either at the bottom or in a bag on the back hook. Next, as you undress pile/hang your clothes over said valuables, finishing with your socks and underwear. Make sure your undies are prominently covering your stuff, so that they’re the first thing staring anybody in the face if they open the door. Nobody wants to paw past skivvies to look for a couple of bucks or a cell phone. Bring your oldest pairs to the gym; people are even less inclined to touch the dingy things. Once, back at BU gym there was a spate of thefts in the locker room. Still lockless, I amped up the safeguards by adding skid marks to my jockeys with a brown magic marker. To outwit a scumbag you need to have a sharper sense of scummy. 

   Finally – Hydration. Obviously, keeping fluids going into you is important whether you’re destroying your knees over four miles on crappy country roads or cleaning out the garage. Hydration makes you feel better all over, keeps you sharp. And when your water levels drop you can get awfully stupid, leading to this chunk of wisdom: Never, never, neeeeeeeverrrrr, ever drink anything you find under the seat of a family car. Last week I was shoveling up the wrapper/cracker/small toy/juice box holocaust in the car when I fished out an orange Gatorade from under the driver’s seat. That’s where all the Elsie-related flotsam winds up and it was nearly full. Classic Elsie – open, taste, recap and ditch. I gave it a once over and it looked just fine. And I was thirsty.

   Well, no, of course I didn’t take a sip. I found it under the seat, you see. Coulda been there for decades.

It went into the pile of stuff due to be discarded while I got on with the garage clean up. Dusty, thirsty work and there was the Gatorade, maybe it was fine – shouldn’t waste stuff…aw, what the hell was wrong with me? It was three feet from the garage fridge and lots of new, cold Gatorades. Purple ones, too! Better get rid of that trash heap along with the temptation; out to the bins – this in the garbage, that one too, this into recycling, that one is garbage, Gatorade gets opened and poured into my mouth…What do you know? My instincts had been right on all along. It was tasty, for the entire half second the liquid poured into my moron mouth before getting dammed by a gelatinous glob slamming into my teeth. Ackkkk!!! A sport beverage jellyfish! Immediately I horked everything out of my mouth and looked back into the bottle.  There were now little bruise-toned sea urchins of mold floating around like spiky eyeballs of the damned. Oh fucky, yet another reminder that I may harp on the lack of common sense on the planet but there are still tragic glitches in my own. At least there’s always a moral or three to be grasped. In this case it’s these: Always hydrate before cleaning out the car and keep your little daughter away from the sport drinks.

Next post: Saturday Morning Soccer Mom Slap Fights! Bring popcorn and a comfy pair of sweats.