2001 A GYM ODYSSEY

 I, like most people just shy of thirty (really more frightened than shy, but I'm not the one making up colloquilisms... yet), tend to view anything I did in my twenties as the recent past.  For example, I thought it'd be fun to play basketball for an hour last year.  A friend asked me if I wanted to join him in the game and, being mindful of the fact that I used to play all the time, I said sure.  One collapsed lung, two pulled hamstrings, and several bouts of dry heaving later (This is a tangent but any time I make a list like that I think of the 12 days of Christmas song.  Now I'm not one to bash Christmas songs, I think they're great, heck, I'd be loath to bet against 80% of the songs on the third Christina Aguillara Christmas cd being better than 'Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel', still I recently looked up the lyrics to the 12 days of Christmas and I have to say I was left wondering about the song's intended audience.  Ostensibly, this is about someone getting their 'true love' a gift corresponding to the day of Christmas. Only, on the eighth day, the gift is eight maids a milking and the ninth day's gift are nine ladies dancing.  I don't want to read to much into this but I'm pretty sure the number of people who'd thank you for getting them dancing girls and women with tireless forearms are limited to those blessed with the Y chromosome.  Anyway back to my sentence.) I realized that the last time I'd actually played basketball had been about 7 years prior, which while recent in my mind, wasn't exactly the kind of pre-game warmup that prevents you from asking those circled around your prone  borderline corpse if it's possible for your intermal organs to spontaneously combust.

I bring this up because I went to the gym yesterday. I used to go to the gym, granted I was 21 and playing basketball at the time, but I went.  So when a friend called me out on my whole 'I'm going to start going to the gym next week', rather than saying, I forgot to bring sneakers and workout pants, I went out and bought some (Don't buy the Reebok workout pants, they have elastic at the bottom and well, I looked like a white MC Hammer). I don't want to say this was a mistake, but after work today I plan on filing for social security disability. 

You see, I'd apparently forgotten alot about gymming.  First, someone with a mouth as big as mine should probably be a lot more scared to be in a room filled with heavily muscled people and blunt metal instruments.  Second, I'm very white.  It used to be a gym could only humiliate you in one way; make you look weak and impotent.  Not that I was OK with that,  but it comes with the territory (plus, and I have no scientific data to prove this, but I'm incredibly virile, so my confidence in my boys was never too shaken).  After yesterday however, I remembered there's a second way a gym can strip you of your manhood.  Kickboxing.  I know there are plenty of white people familiar with rhythm, but on the white spectrum they're more seashell to my cosmic latte (I'd call myself 'anti-flash white' but I know the words to 'Gangster's Paradise' and made an MC Hammer reference so I'm obviously disqualified).  My point is, kicking is difficult for my 29 year old groin.  Kicking high is both difficult and painful.  Kicking high to a beat, is hard, painful and apparently, impossible.  Only, everyone else, including about 20 women, half of whom have never seen the hungry side of a diet, seemed to think it was decidedly possible (Yeah, I'm not feeling to proud right now).  Third, it's hard to respond to an instructor with witty banter when you're crying.

All of this is to say, is it possible 2001 was that long ago?

P.S. Yesterday's post was reprinted with a new intro and 100% fewer masturbation jokes on thevertexblog.com. It's a cool site, check it out.