DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Most folks would resent being treated as a stereotype. Me, I sort of enjoy it.

I was cooling off at the gym, breaking one of my New Year’s Resolutions by reading celebrity news (Entertainment Magazine — could have been worse; could have been People), drenched and steaming after finishing my treadmill session, when a diminutive woman approached to ask a favor. “Could you go sweat somewhere else,” I expected her to say, for I was sitting in the only chair in the room.

This single chair is usually covered in clothing because many inconsiderate gym patrons use it to store their jackets and sweatshirts while they work out. There are two locker rooms provided for the express purpose of storing jackets and sweatshirts, but the locker rooms are about 10 steps away, apparently too far to go, and anyway, it isn’t as if any of these people came in to get exercise.

This particular day, the chair was only partially covered in clothes, and so I sat on it (and them), reasoning that if people disliked having sweaty guys dripping on their jackets they could instead stash them safely in a locker. It’s a sort of conditioned-response experiment; if it doesn’t work I’ll have to break out the electrodes.

Anyway, when the woman approached I suspected that I’d sat down on her coat. But in fact she had a different concern; she wanted to borrow my muscles. One of the other patrons had apparently left the 35-lb plates on the Smith press, and this woman was afraid she was not strong enough to remove them. She’s tiny — her biceps are about the same circumference as my wrists.

The best part about being asked to help was realizing that, of the ~33814080 remaining minutes I plan to live, I would otherwise have spent another one reading about Spider-Man. Yikes. She interrupted me just in time.