The tale of the Incredible Hulk

The things that the slightly chubby girl sees at the gym are often too strange to talk about, but today is an exception. She’s really not such a critical person when it comes to gym behavior because, after all, she is still trying to figure out how to enter and exit some of the weight lifting machines (and that’s after she’s read the directions). But on one particular day in December, she sees something that she cannot ignore. “No,” she thinks to herself, “This cannot go unnoticed. Humanity itself will suffer if this is not commented upon. I do this for Humanity.”

If the big men in the Baby Gap T’s make this girl giggle, the man she spotted on this particular day makes her want to turn around on her heels and exit the facility so that she can grab a tissue from the bathroom, walk out the door and then laugh so hard until she snorts and snot comes out of her nose (notice the preparedness for this event). He is not sporting a tiny cotton shirt but he has chosen, instead, a navy sweatshirt with matching navy sweatpants. So… he’s pretty well covered. Thank you, sir.

The girl firsts spots him while she is curling her twelve pound weights while admiring herself in the mirror- the flab is looking tighter; on second thought, maybe it’s just the mirror. He is lying on the floor, under a barbell that contains no less than two hundred pounds and he appears to be in the beginning stages of developing a large hernia. She would have called for help but quickly noticed that he was actually lifting something that was part of a machine- a built in spotter of sorts. In other words, the man could have gotten out from under this thing. Instead, he was choosing to partake in an activity during which he was very likely do damage that no chiropractor could undo.

And the noises. On a scale of one to ten where one is a cat purring and ten in a woman in labor being gagged by a malicious midwife, his grunts registered a seven, bordering on eight. Sometimes, near yelps escaped and were quickly silenced by his labored breathing. At one point, the girl and three or four of the other men (and yes, the weight area consisted of ONE female), gave in and flat out stared at the poor struggling soul in part pity and part sheer curiosity: Was he going to make it through this one?

After it was over and the man had moved onto jumping rope at an alarmingly, but not terrifyingly, fast pace, the slightly chubby girl was able to look down at the meager free weights clenched in her own small hands and smile, immensely thankful that there was no risk that she would have to change her pants after her workout.

The tale of a chubby girl at a gym

Once upon a time, there was a slightly chubby girl of 20 who managed to work herself into a near neurotic furor every time she arrived at the place filled with cleverly named gym equipment (Exerluxofitnestic?) and sweaty, large men.

It had often bothered this particular girl that other people seemed to feel so at home in this establishment: fit chicks in skin tight jogging shorts with a strut in their step that said, "I own this place," and bulky middle aged men whose Baby Gap t-shirts cried out to the world, "Muscles far TOO BIG for this tiny shirt." This girl often felt that if she took one wrong step onto the mats or veered too close to the bench press that a giant hole in the floor would open up and swallow her whole, sucking her deep down into a pit filled with doughnuts, potato chips and other fat suckers like herself who'd made a wrong move during their venture into the land of "healthy". (Come to think of it, with better lighting, that dungeon might actually be more pleasant than the gym itself...)

But on any given day, the short girl with the over sized sweat pants and baggy T-shirt would be found huffing away on the treadmill, trying to unobtrusively glance at the twenty others surrounding her in order to figure out which percentage of them were walking, not running, like her. Usually the answer was 0%. But none the less, she would wrinkle her nose in determination and press the "increase speed" button three or four times and pick up the pace. Then, feeling as if she was about to fall flat on her face, she would press the "decrease speed" button once or twice and be back at approximate same speed she was to begin with.

After thirty or so minutes of this adventure, the girl would stumble off the machine, dizzy, and trip elegantly over her own shoelaces, quickly looking around to see if anyone had noticed it. They had. She would then make her way over to the free weights and search for ten minutes for the dumb bells (the name ever so accurate!) that she could actually pick up, only to find them in a rack removed from the "real" weights. Looking around hastily to confirm that no one was judging her, she would grab two 15 pound weights, and haughtily strut over the the bench. "Haha," she would say to herself, "Now I'm going to pump some iron..." After two or three shoulder presses, she would then dejectedly exchange her 15's for some 10's and, finding her bench now occupied by Baby Gap #7, she would do ten to eleven bicep curls standing awkwardly in the middle of the floor and then rationalize the idea of trying out the weight machines.

After getting stuck in some sort of leg lift/torture chamber, she would then sanitize her hands, don her coat and then, on the way out, pick up her pride at the front desk.

But despite these awkward, sometimes painful moments, the gym adventures continue for this slightly chubby girl because, on the walk to the parking lot, that girl feels better about herself than at any other time of her day.

A lot about nothing

I have never once been described as a woman of few words. I love to talk and talk loves me. Sometimes it seems like I can get a bit out of control with my words and thoughts and that they are seem to jumble together into complete unimportance. I constantly ask myself, "Is this thought necessary to share with everyone?" and "Can you just shut up?" For a long while I was self conscious about my big mouth. Actually, that's a lie: I still am. But what I've managed to do is come to the conclusion that my big mouth is part of who I am. If I don't like that part, I can attempt to change it but in the end, it's a personality trait.

What I'm getting at is that we all have things about ourselves that we don't particularly care for. Perhaps it is a physical trait (and Lord knows I have enough of those to complain about) or a personality trait, but regardless, they are there and they are bothersome to us. However, I'd like for you to consider something a not so wise person told me in a gleaming moment of wisdom: "People think about you way less than you think that they think about you." I can't tell you how many times I've pulled that one out of my back pocket when I'm staring at my closet agonizing over whether people will remember that I wore those jeans yesterday. "No," I think, "No one cares about what pants you wear."

And same thing with my big mouth. Sure, I'm working on shutting it every so often for vocal chord relaxation and to let the swelling go down in my tongue, but for now, I'm probably agonizing over it a bit more than I need to. And at this point in my life, I really need to cut out the self propelled agony.

Just a thought.