New Lows

The other day I was at the gym.  Those of you that know where I go know that it seems to be a bottomless pit in terms of how bad things could be.

There is a man who eats hot sub sandwiches right near the door to the weight room.  Just plops down in a chair meant for an employee to check people in or something, and he’ll just dig into a roast beef sandwich.  Like it’s his goddamn office and he’s grabbing a quick bite before hitting a meeting.  It’s like that except the guy is borderline homeless, spoke to me once about the difficulties of bus driving, and regularly works out in black jeans.

The standard was already very, very low, is what I’m getting at.

And then we had band-aid in the shower.

I don’t know when this band-aid in the pool thing started.  How many band-aids are people wearing every year?  I’ll end up with…maybe one.  Two tops.  In an entire year.  I go swimming about once every three years.  So do the math on that one, but statistically we’re talking about a very low chance of this happening.  So how many band-aids are people wearing, number one, and number two, why the fuck are they wearing them into the pool?  It’s like watching a baby swim in a diaper.  It’s just a loose band of plastic through which pool water is sluicing over the shit.  I love that.  A baby can get in the pool with a diaper on, but if I calmly walked down the stairs and into the water while holding a shit log in my hand, people would think I was an animal.

Anyway, people wear band-aids in the pool.  I get it.  They come off, you don’t notice, then it’s just gone.

Then I’m in the shower.  This is the place where people go to get clean.

By the way, what fucking piece of shit decided that every pool needed a basketball hoop with a bent-to-shit rim?

Anyway, in the shower.  Now in the shower, your band-aid comes off, you gotta notice that shit, right?  When you step on a squishing band-aid, gasp, then realize it’s your own band-aid?

So when I look down and see a band-aid, I think that some motherfucker knew what was going on.  Because not ONLY did they leave a band-aid in the shower, but it was one of these:

That’s right.  A bunion cushion.  For some reason, you went into the gym shower with a bunion cushion on, then left it there, sogging near the drain.

Fucking.  Animals.

People often talk about plateauing at the gym, getting to a point where it feels like you’re kind of stuck, making very little progress.

What keeps me going?

The idea of getting strong enough to destroy that hellhole with my bare hands.  Because that’s going to be a sweet, sweet day.