I spent the beginning of the day at the gym. It's very clean and busy, both things that I seek out in a gym. I need to have different things constantly going on around me in order to work out for extended periods of time. Televisions on, my music blaring through my headphones, other people putting their bodies through rigorous training along with me, etc, etc. Twenty nine dollars a month is a steal, in my opinion. That makes me enjoy my time spent there all the more. Getting my money's worth, bitches.
I tend to hog one specific machine for too much time. There are many reasons for this. It's so busy at some hours that it becomes a scramble to find a machine that isn't in use. Awkwardly lingering around a machine to get across the message of "Yo, your time has expired. Get the fuck off." is of no interest me. I go to great lengths to avoid these types of situations, actually. This time, I was on the opposite end of the interaction. I was the one that needed to realize that my time had expired and that I need to get the fuck off. He was a giant dude. Probably 6'4" and 260-270 pounds of muscle.
He said, "Hey man, do you mind if we switch off using this?"
He was wearing a Yankee's hat so I replied in a sarcastic tone, "I'll fight you for it."
He was two of me. Easily, probably more than two of me. He thankfully found it funny and that was the end of our dialogue. We both were wearing our personal music devices.
As I left the gym, I decided to take the train over to Trader Joe's to buy some healthy food. At the moment, I'm riding out a health-food bender and Trader Joe's is the place to go for that. Hopefully it doesn't last too long because this type of food happens to be the most expensive. I picked up a package of salmon and saw that the price was $11. I thought to myself, "This shit better be laced with gold." After some reasoning with my more frugal half, I threw it in my basket. I even bought multi-vitamins. You bastards that are healthier and in better shape than I sucked me into this world. You had me surrounded at the gym, all of you in excellent physical condition. I envy you. I'll get there some day. Baby steps. Expensive baby steps.
On my way back from Trader Joe's, I browsed around Border's. It's the mother of all bookstore chains. They're so helpful and they're all so happy. It makes me feel like I'm being run through a well oiled machine. I hate it, but it just so happens that these places are well-stocked and very organized. Whenever someone is being overly helpful or smiley, I think about how they are trained to act that way. Like puppets. I envision a well dressed district manager coming into the store before the doors are opened to the public. I picture him calling a meeting where every employee is ordered to attend. He sets up an easel to harness a poster filled with charts and graphs.
He says, "Our quarterly earnings are down 40% compared to this time last year! This is proposterous!"
He then grabs a whip out of his briefcase and begins whipping all of the employees while yelling, "Smile you motherfuckers! Smile! What do I pay you for? My money is at stake! Smiles mean dollars!"
I know, I know. It's probably a bit of an exaggeration. Not impossible though.
I picked up Bukowski's "The Most Beautiful Woman in Town." After some thought, I realized that I didn't want to support this beast of a corporation, so I found a comfortable recliner in the coffee shop looking area. To my right there was a man reading a "Dummy's Guide To..." I can't remember the topic, but he was silent and concentrated. To my left sat a girl (or woman?) around my age, I guessed. She had black hair and was very attractive in a cute and innocent sort of way. She sat with her bag on her lap, reading a graphic novel. After a few minutes passed, she started reading aloud. At first I thought it was a joke or something. Maybe I was on some hidden camera show or something, I'll never know for sure. The guy to my right was expressing his aggravation in the form of a long, deep sigh.
I tolerated it quietly for around ten minutes. I glanced at her quickly to see if there were any evident conditions that made it necessary for her to read aloud in a store. I found nothing. I didn't confront her about it. Instead, I decided to also read aloud. This created a noisy and confusing environment for everyone around us and took only about a paragraph's worth of words for her to stop. My new friend to my right found it very amusing and laughed softly. Minutes later, she left and I surprisingly felt bad about it. I mean, I did accomplish what I wanted to: for her to stop reading aloud. It was more dramatic than I would have liked, and that made me feel like an asshole. At the same time, if she weren't such an inconsiderate prick, she wouldn't have found herself in the situation to begin with.
