An Open Letter to Gym Weirdos

Dear Mr. Gym Screamer and other Gym Weirdos,

I applaud your intensity, your work ethic, and your dedication to building freakishly huge biceps while managing to utterly forsake those fragile, colt-like stilts where your legs should be. During those brief moments that you glance around to ascertain whether any admirers are watching you, you are no doubt perplexed by others' apparent fascination with the treadmill and the rowing machine, and comforted by the fact that the otherworldly orange glow of your leathery tan eclipses me as you walk by. I am like a pale, thin ghost next to your magnificence, but you don’t need me to tell you that. I can see in your eyes that you are smugly congratulating yourself on the knowledge that you could beat the ever-living crap out of most of your fellow gym attendees with those biceps, including myself. This is probably true, provided you could catch me, because those spindly legs of yours most likely would cave under the pressure of bearing the weight of your upper body while chasing me. I also don’t mind that you cause such a riot of commotion, what with all the noisy breathing and those heavy plates crashing to the ground. Nor do I mind that you spend so much time staring lovingly into the mirror at your profile, though this is unnecessary; just ask anyone in the gym and they’ll assure you that your arms are wicked huge, bro. You are akin to the loud, low riding, decked out Kia car next to me in traffic waiting for a light to change; the more you rev your engine, the more I spit up a little bit in my mouth.

What I mind most are those startling war screams that occasionally escape from somewhere deep inside your bowels. When you did this yesterday, I nearly dropped the weights I was holding as my heart rate jumped astronomically thinking that with this amount of sound, surely someone had been decapitated. It sounded like a cross between a dry heave and the cry of some fantasy-novel humanoid—an ogre perhaps. Dry heaves are disgusting, unnecessary, overly dramatic, and frankly, scary. If you can startle me with your shrillness over the top of the music of FloRida blaring in my headphones, you are too loud! After the initial shock of your gurgled scream wore off, I had only the sincerest concern. I assumed that anyone uttering that sound must have just had an aneurysm, and would be lying dead on the floor, or was perhaps battling a mean case of giardia, and would be standing in a puddle of liquid excrement. I was, however, annoyed when I figured out that it was just you again, living in your steroid-induced moment of pure, weightlifting ecstasy.

So I beg you, please tone it down, so that I, and the rest of your fellow gym attendees, might break our humble sweat in peace. Please stop assuming that hearing you grunt, heave, drop your weights, and simply walk past the rest of us is in any way impressive, inspiring, or the highpoint in our day. Consider saving some of that intensity and energy for FINDING A JOB so that your day is filled with more than 3 hour workout sessions and self aggrandizement. But you will probably just continue showing off for all of the nubile young women in the gym who you will continue to assume are most certainly lusting after you, because, as you are well aware, there’s nothing hotter than bulging shoulder veins tearing at the seams of a sleeveless T-shirt with the neck cut out mixed in with colt-like stilt legs, a huge ego, and a bad spray tan.

I could also write similar letters to the other perplexing personalities at the gym: the woman who is obviously hopped up on testosterone given her muscle girth, neck circumference, B.O. that reaches every nook and cranny of the gym, and complete lack of breast tissue. Also the much older gentleman who I always worry has died on his piece of workout equipment, but is instead napping, the oddly over-confident, obese, naked woman in the locker room who galavants around the room, bending and contorting in perplexing and disturbing ways, and the phantom farter who seems to always strike when I am trekking up that most difficult incline or sprinting on the treadmill and therefore having to breathe in, rapidly and deeply. Darn you all!!


Sincerely,


Sandra Flynn--fellow gym attendee