The Locker Room Effect

Some people use scales religiously to dictate when they go to the gym.  I, however, have a different and quite simple method.  When I get on a bus, and feel parts of me vibrating that shouldn’t, I get myself to the nearest elliptical machine/lap pool and go to TOWN. 

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those skinny girls who complain about how fat they are while they’re eating diet salads and drinking low cal water. 

Trust me, I'm not a fan of them either.  But I do have a compulsive need to keep in shape.  Who knows when the first zombies will show up?  I need to get my endurance on par to do all that running and bludgeoning and whatnot.

Once I actually get to the gym, no matter when or where, there always seems to be something to hold me up.  I dubbed this mysterious reoccurrence the Locker Room Effect.  The Locker Room Effect can pertain to a person or event that in some way shape or form sets me a bit off kilter for my workout, and possibly DAYS afterward.

There was one day in particular where the Locker Room Effect really had it out for me.

I got up bright and early to go and get my gym time out of the way so I could party hard later on that evening.

I swaggered into the locker room, ready to take on my laps and whatnot... 

...when my field of view was obscured by… ulp… er… God no… 

Naked old women.

THEY HAD NO SHAME.  Every last saggy piece of them.  I couldn’t handle something of this magnitude at ten o clock in the morning.  

Me being able to handle that equates to Snooki being able to climb Mount Everest in a day without supplemental oxygen and protective gear, her only tools being claw length nails, which I’m assuming she’d use as pickaxes.

I rush on out to the pool to do my laps and leave that nightmarish land of sagging flesh behind me. 

As I entered the pool room, I was taken aback.  There, on the bleachers next to the lap pool, was an honest to goodness pirate.  

(I may be overexaggerating his piratey-ness.  Hookers aren’t even allowed in my gym.  He must have been attracted to the body of water.  Because that’s what pirates like the best, besides gold and prostitutes.)

Okay, so he may have just looked like this. 

But after what I had just experienced, I’m pretty sure my brain was trying to distract me.  Instead of having more minor hallucinations, I decided to use my laps to take my mind off of that... happening... earlier.

Once my laps were done I headed back into the locker room to pack up and go home for a nap.  Or maybe a counterproductive large piece of cake.  Either way, my car beckoned.  As I opened my locker, an old woman (thankfully clothed) walked up to me.  I assumed she had a question about where something was, and still having leftover Girl Scout instincts, it was all I could do to help her with whatever she needed.  As it turns out, she didn’t need to ask me anything.  Rather, she had something very pressing to tell ME. 

And then she vanished... like a bat into the night, or an old person into a AARP meeting.  With her  brisk exit, she left me with a profound and muddled sense of self.  

I, myself, have never really thought I looked birdlike in any sense.  I have had a more than average number of strangers insult me in this fashion though, and so I was a little more prepared than the average person (but we'll get to those stories another time).  That doesn't mean that it didn't hurt a little bit, and I found myself examining face in the mirror for birdlike attributes.

I didn't find any... not really.