Everyone has their comfort zone, a location where his/her mind sifts through the daily garbage and life's weighty decisions. It is in this comfort zone where the brain is in its wheelhouse and fires the most level-headed cerebral neurons. For some, this zone is a serene, ambient coffee shop; for others, it's behind the wheel on a country road; for others still, it's in the confines of three tiled walls and a shower curtain. My most thorough mind-scraping is performed in a gym with barbells in hand or on a treadmill.
I have yet to pinpoint what about the gym is so desirable, especially when a third of my attendance requires an inner pep talk or some sort of post-workout gastronomical negotiation with myself. But I love it. It could very well be the riddance of the day's amassed perspiration and frustration; or the pleasure in knowing that my entire hour-plus workout just negated the caloric damage of that fun-size Baby Ruth I polished off after lunch; or maybe it's the giggly towel-snapping I do with "the boys" in the steam room.
Whatever the reason, I leverage the good vibes flowing through the fitness to knock out some serious, gut-wrenching conflicts and mankind quandaries. Like, just the other day, between sets of bicep curls, I contemplated effective means to reduce the national deficit, which opened up a swirling rabbit hole of the ramifications of China one day deciding to suddenly stop loaning to the U.S. federal government and start collecting, which somehow led to me deciding to frugally purchase Christmas gift-wrapping supplies at Big Lots rather than Walmart. I mean, that's at least eight bucks saved. Now, that’s conflict resolution!
An undeniable common denominator among all gyms worldwide is the repeating personality traits among the clientele. Every gym has its predictable, standard characters -- it's a sitcom waiting to be written:
- The guy who works out all the time and yet shows no visible signs of change in his three-year gym tenure.
- The aimless wanderer who aimlessly wanders around with a towel over his shoulder but with no intention of ever using the towel because he only aimlessly wanders around.
- The girl who actually applies more makeup prior to her cardio class and uses a water bottle with layers of dried lipstick around the opening.
- The older gents who prefer their sports conversations to only occur in the openness of the locker room. While naked. And facing each other.
- The meathead who groans and grunts obnoxiously, uncomfortably, and utterly unnecessarily loud with each muscle exertion as if those of us around him are on the brink of witnessing a scientific breakthrough in the first male-birthed child.
- The boney, wiry guy whose entire dresser drawer of gym attire consists of Under Armour.
- The guy who appears to be flirting with himself in every mirror, in every stance and flexed position imaginable.
- The curvaceous female who saunters the gym like it's a Paris runway in totally nonfunctional skin-tight sweat pants.
- The dude who bench-pressed the day before yesterday, bench-pressed again yesterday, and today is on an ab-crunch machi--oh, nope, never mind, he was just waiting for a bench press to be freed up.
The list is truly endless. Yet somehow fairly universal. It's as if standard gym protocol mandates that each fitness center has this many weights, that many machines, and these people. Trust me, I used to work part-time at a gym myself -- you couldn't dream of more impeccable people-watching. It's like a fountain of youth for your self-confidence.
Oh, and that back-to-back musical one-two punch courtesy of Ace of Base and Nickelback you hear over the gym speakers? It's no accident. Someone actually requested that radio station. What kind of sick world do we live in?
It's crude. It's controversial. It's a collection of connected phalanges.
The inappropriateness of the middle finger has always miffed me. It's befuddling to me that just saying "middle finger" almost feels risqué. It's the only body part I can think of that can be exposed at all times with no thought or offense, until it's in one particular position. One moment it's a high-five constituent; then, at the blink of an eye, it's a literal digital F-bomb. A right-angle formation changes everything.
It's ridiculous enough that people -- well, Western civilization -- find it offensive. But when TV stations blur it out -- actually go through the editing trouble to blur out a finger based on its posture and solitude -- something seems preposterously awry. Purely because someone at some point in history assigned vulgar meaning to that finger once it is elevated to a certain level and distances itself by a socially agreeable measurement of space from its appendaged counterparts, that regular ol' finger becomes lewd, distasteful, and demanding of censorship. So, it's blurred out. A finger. A finger is blurred out. A series of knuckles and a single nail plate are completely, fleetingly blurred from our vision. Then the finger returns to normal resting stage, and the blur is removed.
We know what the finger looks like -- we just saw it before and after the blurred image. And we know what is happening behind the blur. We can actually make this same signal with our own middle finger. Yet they blur it out.
It's a finger, people. It has gotten to the point where you have a better chance at watching a TV show where a chick gets topless than that chick gives someone the middle finger.
So, what about the thumb, huh? How does the thumb get away with it, being all upright and okay -- literally "okay." What is so darn special about the thumb that it is not only welcomed when vertical and singularized but encouraged? I mean, who doesn't like a thumbs-up? Would you rather be on the receiving end of an upright thumb or an upright middle finger? Exactly. But why?
I wonder what it was like to be the first recipient of a middle finger. Something (probably the speedball I did intravenously at lunch) tells me it was introduced in an old western town circa late 19th century around high noon. I imagine the conversation immediately following went something like this:
Flipper-Offer: "I think you're on my horse, buddy."
Horse Thief: "Yep, 'cause I’m stealing it!"
[Flipper-Offer flips Horse Thief off]
Horse Thief: "Wait, what was that?"
Flipper-Offer: "That was my middle finger."
Horse Thief: "Saw that. But why?"
Flipper-Offer: "That's me saying, 'Screw you.' You know, 'Up yours' for stealing my horse."
Horse Thief: "So, why didn't you just say that?"
Flipper-Offer: "I don't know. That's just what I do."
Horse Thief: "Alright. Well, see ya later."
The whole premise of a finger being insulting is just silly. I know I'm supposed to be indignantly appalled when someone singles out his/her middle finger and flashes it in my general direction, but I can't. To me it's the hand signal equivalent of calling me a "honky": Am I supposed to be offended? I guess, but why am I laughing so loudly?
