So, yesterday I was sitting in my car in the parking lot of our local YMCA. We have a really big, nice Y with a large weight and exercise room. My husband had gone to work out in an effort to counteract some of the damage done by the food extravaganza that always seems to accompany the holiday season. I was picking him up. Why was I picking him up instead of working out with him, you ask? The answer is simple. Public. Humiliation. I'm not really into it. I would rather lock myself in the room at home where we keep the treadmill, turn on the TV, and walk to my heart's content - alone. So any humiliation taking place is private, not public. No witnesses. No tee heeing. No self-consciousness. Just me. No cheerleader-type, cute young, thin girls in their lycra work out clothes looking at me thinking that if they looked like me they would shoot themselves (why are they even there anyway?). No old gross men who think they're still 25 looking at me and enjoying it (probably because most of them are blind without their glasses, which they leave in their locker).
AND - - no chance of seeing someone I know. That's the worst part for me. I could probably deal with the young lycra cladden girls because - hide the guns, honey - little do they know, they WILL look like me someday. And I can handle the drooling old guys who stare because they're just blind and pathetic. But people I know seeing me??!! Maybe even people I work with?!? That I couldn't handle. Some things to me are just meant to be private - working out is one of them.
So, I'll continue to pick up my husband when he needs a ride. And I'll continue to lock myself in the treadmill room. The young girls and the pathetic old geezers will just have to find someone else to laugh or stare at.
