Seriously, The Gym is a Scary Place

My guest is physical education teacher in my school district. He is also a fellow tiger, a.k.a, Towson U. alum. He likes long walks......just kidding. He has a fondness for bar crawls, football and Christmas lawn decorations, primarily inflatable snowmen. But aside from this, he is a cool guy, good Friend, and fun to hang out with. My guest and I discovered that we both have rather entertaining and disgusting experiences at the gym and we are even discussing the possibility of creating a blog solely based on this. But for now, here is our first joint entry, with the focus on two of the people we regularly run into in our attempts to be fit and fabulous. After years of working out at several different gyms, I have recently come into contact with two different unforgettable people. BO is an interesting man in his mid 40's. He keeps in excellent shape through cardiovascular exercise....great for you. However, BO (First name Body, last name Odor)has been causing me some mega grief. No matter what time of day I go to the gym, he is there, assaulting my nostrils like the Americans assaulted North Vietnamese bases in Cambodia under Nixon. It is that bad. So, here is what I say to BO in my head each time I get a whiff of him:

BO, you absolutely smell like a knapsack filled with curry that had been left in the Gobi Desert for 17 years. You drip your poisonous perspiration all over the place while stinking up the joint. YOU KNOW YOU SMELL, so take 6 minutes out of your day and find out how a bar of soap works. I will give you a few more shower practice days before I start placing Glade stickups on you.

Love, Special Guest

Now, my turn. I have a NYSC passport membership, so that provides me with the privilege of creeping around facilities everywhere. In Long Beach, I have been frequently running into Hal, or as his friends call him...Halitosis. Like Ryan, he is there whenever I am there. Like a rash, he pops up if I am there at 7 AM on a school snow day, or 4:30 in the afternoon when I have no tutoring or club supervision. Here is what I say to HAL in my head each time I get of his breath:

HAL, do you not notice that people take ten steps back from you when you speak to them? Do your girlfriends/boyfriends/wife/husband wear nose plugs when they sleep next to you? Each time you turn your head in my direction, especially the day when a buddy of yours was talking to you right in between our machines, I almost passed out. Sheer will kept me from doing so, because you were closest to me and I probably would have died had it been you administering mouth to mouth. And to top it off, you are a loud talker too. Perhaps this is how you compensate for the nagging thought in the back your mind that wonders why people never sit too close to you, or why they are pretending to blow their nose but are really just shielding it from your breath. Here is a tip: See a specialist. Look into your diet. Scrape your tongue. Chew a piece of gum 24 hours a day. Or just keep your mouth shut. It sounds harsh, but it is just good looking out.

Are we mean? We are tigers. We are predators, yet our nostrils seem to be the innocent prey of those who are too blind to see they wreak. The gym really is an example of the will that fuels the survival of the fittest.