Friday, March 25, 2005

Gulls at the Outpost

In my pursuit of a thinner body, I was at the gym last night working out. I'd already run a mile on the track, and at that point I was on the treadmill doing some fast incline walking and feeling really good about myself. Then a group of teenage volleyball playing (they play on a league at the gym), short-short wearing, bubble gum chewing, still smell like baby powder and Bonnie Bell lip gloss wearing girls descended around my treadmill all at once like a flock of sea gulls surrounding abandoned sardine.

One itty-bitty girl started her treadmill at 5.5mph as a warm up. I struggle to endure 30 minutes of 4.7mph. I felt jealous of their youth. Nothing on them jiggled like jello, they had no laugh lines, no fine lines, no lines of any kind, they had healthy hair not damaged by years of high lights/low lights...I could have gone on and on. All of a sudden, my accomlishment for the night seemed small.

About two minutes after the girls swarmed around my machine, they got bored. The sea gulls noticed American Idol was on and was desperately trying to figure out how to 'watch' it. We have TV's in front of the machines at the gym. There are 8 TV sets altogether, all on a different channel. There is a receiver/control on each machine which allows the users to pick the TV station they want (numbered 1 thru 8) and adjust the volume on the user's head set.

They kept pressing the volume button on the receiver attached to the machine but nothing happened. They assumed the receiver worked like a remote control...just like at home. Then the 5.5mph girl got off her machine, walked over to the TV set and started upping the volume on the TV. Suddenly a shrill 'Ouch!' comes from behind me. A woman who had been watching the show via her head set pulled her head set off in pain. I guess if you turn the volume up manually from the TV set, it affects those listening on the headset as well. 'Itty-Bitty' stepped away from the set and did the walk of shame into the locker room.

I smirked and kept walking. Stupid sea gulls.

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