A Day In Jawnville: Gym Creep

I’ve seen the guy before. He’s always wearing a long, oversized white t-shirt, sometimes thin enough that his nipples and chest hairs hiding beneath are visible. He wears thick, white walking sneakers that people much older than him usually wear. He might be fifty.

I’ve seen him remove those sneakers to wrap his tube-socked cover feet around a yoga ball to perform leg lifts. Who takes off their shoes in a gym cardio room? Hell, I wear my mine into the sauna. A traumatic experience with an aggressive plantar wart from my high school locker room taught me better.

When I saw him working out on one of the two elliptical machines directly in front of the television, I knew I was doomed. The other elliptical machines just wouldn’t cut it for me. My limited range of neck-motion from a car wreck injury makes watching TV from the other machines quite difficult and I usually go batty without some sort of visual distraction during forty minutes of cardio.

I climbed onto the elliptical and started my workout. We were the only two in the cardio room. He had the television controller on his machine, but we were in good shape. He had the Phillies baseball game on. Three minutes later, my luck had run out.

He grabbed the remote. I was confused. The Phillies were in the middle of the top of the fourth inning. It wasn’t a commercial break. Then, with one push of a button, the television switched to the Discovery Network. Unbeknownst to me, it actually was a commercial break, just not in the Phillies game. The Phillies were simply filler for him as he was in the middle of an episode of Naked and Afraid.

He seemed content with a quizzical look to him. Yup, Naked & Afraid. In a gym cardio room!

Crime dramas that I have no interest in? Sure. FOX News? That’s doable. Hell, I’ve even worked out while someone had Jerry Springer on the TV. But, Naked & Afraid?

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve watched the show. I’ve watched several episodes. It’s oddly interesting. But, at the gym?

Maybe I’m a Puritan and don’t know it. Something just felt weird about slugging away at the elliptical while watching a show with partially pixellated naked people running through the jungle. He was glued to it and my creepmeter was flying off the charts.

Three more minutes passed. The guy stopped his machine and rolled. I answered a group text from a couple of buddies about betting the San Francisco Giants game later that night. Before I could hop off my machine, grab the remote, and change the channel, two ladies entered. They sat on stationary bikes. I saw them in the mirror. They noticed the program and turned toward one another with puzzled faces.

I was screwed. These two cycling ladies had no idea the dude had put this show on. In their minds, I was the Naked & Afraid enthusiast. I was now their gym creep.