Besides McDonalds, there are more gyms than any other building in the world. This is because old people are always building gyms so as to have quiet and accepting places in which they can walk around naked. In fact, when men reach an old age, like 50, and their children no longer wish to take care of them, many are put in YMCAs to live peacefully before they pass on to the magic locker room in the sky.
If you are not a member of a gym, go to your friend's house and steal his gym card. If you do not have a friend, go to your local bar. Once there, befriend a drunk old person. He can no doubt sneak you into a gym. Since, however, you'll want to visit the gym more than once, this plan might involve many trips to the bar. Which is fine, because you would have done that anyway.
The average person goes to the gym two to four times a week. There have been a few cases of people working out every day, but these people are rare, since they tend to grow so big they sink into the bowels of the Earth where only archaeologists and lost giraffes can find them.
This is why many machines have the caveat, "If you use this enough, you will meet an archaeologist," which is a scary enough warning -- whenever I think of an archaeologist, I envision a nerdy man with a brush who keeps asking you what girls are like in person.
I have actually been visiting our school's gym a lot recently. I say "actually" because when most people look at me, they think my arms are comparable to jellyfish, in that they are floppy and have the tendency to lose power when peed on. Of course, I rarely use any of the machines when I'm there. Most of the time I'm only walking around, trying to discern what muscles the machines target. This is not easy. For instance, I'll use a machine that I'm positive centers on forearms, and after a few minutes I realize I'm just humping a locker.
To help people like me, most machines have little blurbs about which muscles they focus on. They depict a male with random muscles colored red. While these are helpful pictures, they always scare me. Why doesn't this person have bones? Where is his flesh? Why does he look so happy? The logical assumption is that these machines, while they build muscles, ultimately rip off your bones and flesh. And then they trick you into liking it. I generally pass on such machines.
What's left for me to use, then, are the free weights, which, as I have often learned from uniformed officers with sticks, are not "free" in the monetary sense of the term. The problem with using free weights in the open is that because I am not strong, I'm currently using light weights. This is really embarrassing, because guys next to me are lifting dumbbells the size of, if not Belgium, then China. These people must have started exercising when they were in the womb, lifting the umbilical cord in sets of 20.
I have an excuse for such low weights, though. I had extensive surgery on my shoulder recently, and I have been instructed by a doctor that I need to take it easy on my shoulder. So to explain to people why I'm lifting helium-filled weights, I find ways to reveal I had surgery. The easiest method, of course, is shouting, "Why, yes, Meredith, I did have extensive surgery on my shoulder recently!"
This works to its max potential when you are addressing an elliptical, since many people are afraid to judge insane people for fear of being stalked or asked to hang out.
Another way is to surreptitiously expose the rather large scar on my shoulder. Since I don't wear sleeveless shirts, I roll up my sleeve like a 1950s Broadway gang member. I will then gaze at myself in the mirror, rubbing my exposed scar in an obviously fake manner, to indicate to everyone that although I am in pain from the surgery, I am out here being manly and macho, all the while mistaking the treadmill for the thigh master.
Chris is a Cavalier Daily Life columnist. His column runs weekly on Mondays. He can be reached at shuptrine@cavalierdaily.com.
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