In Her Hazel Eyes

I’m starting this post as I stare at a green apple on my desk. I made it a point to purchase several of these apples to eat as snacks at work rather than munch on a bag of chips or chocolate candy which would taste far better. Since I picked up these apples at the grocery store I have eaten exactly none of them. Somehow having one on my desk makes me feel better even though I’d rather draw it a face and talk to it than ingest it. I typically go through periods where I make meager attempts at trying to eat healthy. These past few weeks has been one of those periods.

I joined a gym about a month ago since it’s started to get chilly here in New York and I won’t be able to run outside much longer. This is the first time I’ve spent a substantial amount of time in any gym and let me tell you… it’s been quite the eye opener. New York City gyms seem to attract a cast of characters at any given time of day or night. Each time I go I see at least one new individual who I’d pay to quarantine and study.

Let us start with the regulars who I would assume live in a back room somewhere deep in bowels of the gym or perhaps sleep standing up in lockers at night. Whether you pop in at 8am on a Tuesday or 11pm on a Sunday night there is going to be a group of men (and I use the term men loosely) standing about by the weight lifting machines. They are usually in packs of at least three to four and seem to lack any grasp of the concept of sleeves. Two of these men always look like they have misplaced their necks and one looks as though he may apply cooking oil as a daily moisturizing product. It occurs to me he may be loitering around because he has difficulty picking up weights with those oily butter fingers. This is probably best for all of us as he’s liable to pitch a barbell across the gym in an attempt to execute a curl.

Next in line, there is always at least one small female on either the treadmill or a bicycle who looks like she’s mistaken the gym for the North Pole. She climbs onto a machine fully clad in long workout pants, hooded sweatshirt, wool hat and sometimes gloves. This confuses me on several levels. Are you training for a marathon in the Arctic? If you have some type of eating disorder would it be simpler to just eat less rather can make the effort to run in that getup? I understand that people sometimes want to sweat out extra calories but geeze man, working out dressed as a woolly mammoth is not the only option.

Whenever I am running on the treadmill, I can always spot one male overachiever within reach. This is the man who purchases head to toe spandex to strut around in and runs so fast you think he may shoot off the treadmill or fling off an arm in the process. Odds are if he did lose a limb he would simply speed up and retrieve the body part at a later date. If you can get a glimpse of one of these overachievers’ pre-workout stretching routines you’ll never be the same. Men in spandex seem to have a fondness for stretching without bending their knees so be prepared if you are behind one. They usually wear an expression of determination as though they are in a Strong Man competition and preparing to throw a piano over the Empire State Building. Be careful not to get too close to one of these specimen as they may try to bite you for running fuel.

For me, working out is typically the easy part. It’s curbing my love of all forms of crap food that’s more difficult. If it came from a fast food restaurant, a box or a freezer, I’ll take two. I would compare eating an apple a day to eating scraps of paper I’ve retrieved from the waste basket under my desk as a snack. In my ideal world an orange would be peeled to reveal a ball of macaroni and cheese and banana peels would house an assortment of string cheeses. While we’re at it everyday household items should also be edible. I’d like to type this sentence on my keyboard and then eat the Shift button since it’s made of cookie dough. Willy Wonka and I would have made fantastic business partners if you ask me…. until I bought him out of the company and ate his office chair.

I’ll most likely post something in a few months about how I haven’t been to the gym in weeks and just bought a truck load of Velveeta to wash my hair with. But until I surrender the last of my self respect in exchange for a cube of cheddar cheese you will be able to find me running on the treadmill after work while laughing to myself at the three ring circus I am surrounded by.