Monday, October 29, 2007

Thank God for you, awkwardly-unaware man!

Counter

Free Counter

So in recent years I've gotten a lot better at not being judgmental of others. It used to be that I would make snide comments about people I didn't even know to not only myself, but any near-standing half-friend within earshot. With that said, I saw this guy at the gym today who was practically begging me to return to my roots of sarcasm. (I think I saw Roots of Sarcasm open for Whitesnake years ago...)

The short and sweet description of this guy: imagine a slightly older Kip from Napoleon Dynamite sauntering his heart out on an elliptical trainer. A more detailed description to follow. So here is a man in his early to mid forties, probably some sort of businessman because he is doing what seems to be non-recreational reading, and has a full manila envelope resting on the control face of the elliptical trainer. Perhaps his cluelessness is evidenced in his complete focus on his reading. He is wearing a simple white tee shirt, nothing unusual there. It's everything else he's wearing, or not wearing that makes things interesting. (Not to worry, the "not wearing" comment only holds a small weight in upcoming statements. I simply threw it in there because it makes for a titillating read.) The rest of the ensemble, from the top down, begins with the slightly yellowed, formerly white sweatband which is grasping desperately to a slightly-balding, poorly-shorn head of straw-like hair. Skipping down past the unusually usual white shirt, we can see he is wearing black spandex shorts, which only seems appropriate for a man who is moving at an astronomically intense two miles per hour on a low-impact exercise device. Not only are the shorts spandex, but they're that old sort of spandex, late-eighties or early-nineties, the slightly shiny stuff that people who don't normally exercise wear to appear like they regularly take trips to the local gymnasium. Before going on to the last item of clothing, I have to describe the piece of flesh connecting the shiny shorts with its podiatric counterpart. The legs are veiny, but not the kind where you can see the blue of the veins. These veins seem to be lumpily holding together his two generally neglected collections of half-muscle, which still seem to struggle despite the fact that the poor guy's torso couldn't have weighed more than fifty pounds. Not to be outdone, the feet are of particular magnificence. Firstly (and here's where the titillation comes to a disappointing end) they are sporting only white tube socks, which, as tube socks tend to do when not held in place by footware, have begun to floppily-increase in length. There are no shoes whatsoever. And, as if this caricature of a man could not get any more precious, he had over-large round glasses and a thin wiry mustache, no doubt to catch the eye of those gym-skanks whose outfits continually shrink to ever decreasing levels of modesty. Oh, I almost forgot the very best part. He is sporting (sporting, mind you, not just wearing) a black leather fanny-pack over the white tee shirt, just above the shiny spandex shorts. Now imagine this sight one row in front of you as you try not to laugh aloud not only at its pure unaware genius, but its comically-slow traipsing along on the elliptical trainer. Honestly I think he could have simply walked around the halls in the adjacent mall-space and gotten a better workout. But then I couldn't have basked in his splendor. Thank God for you, awkwardly unaware man. You bring a smile to the faces of people all over the internet and yet still maintain both your anonymity and dignity because I did not have my camera with me.

3 comments:

Daylan said...

wow. i have no words. when i stop laughing i'll try to find some.

Darin said...

That was me!

Darin said...

I couldn't find any other shorts that day! A little sensitivity, please...