up with figs, (a hiatus)
February 26, 2014
(Because of a variety of circumstances, Lisa and I are taking a Figs break. But! For those who just started reading the blog, I'm going to reach deep into the wayback machine and toss up some old Figs for your enjoyment. Like, say, this one, which is about my rage.)
Don’t get me wrong. I like my gym. As gyms go, it’s a keeper. Treadmills. A pool. Heavy things to lift and put down again. Not too many ‘roided out knuckleheads lifting weights. Almost zero young women (and, let’s face it, older women) dolled up and spandexed. It’s mostly clean.
I go. I run to nowhere. I sweat. I leave. It’s all I could want it to be, really.
And, yet, every now and again, I get that irrational rage. It comes on like a sneeze, set off by, say, the elderly man who ramps the incline on the treadmill up as high as it can go, then clutches to the sides of the machine as if he’s walking into a hurricane. Or at the 30-something woman on the stationary bike who is reading Jodi Picoult and peddling with intense slowness. Or at the college student who spends 20 minutes adjusting a fan so that it blows on her at just the right angle and speed. Or at the moms in the locker rooms who take up the entire bench in order to get their singular kid into a swim suit.
I don’t know where it comes from, the rage. Maybe, after so many years of suppressing it, it is burning off with every tenth calorie expended.
Text ©Adrienne Martini; illustration ©Lisa Horstman. Until the end of time. Or something.
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