Gym? I think I'll just stay home...
The gym is a frightening place. It is full of the abnormal shapes, sounds and smells of hulking weight machines crouched against the walls, thumping trainers on treadmills and dozens of sweaty bodies absorbed in working out. But more frighteningly, it is a not place that is amenable to books.
On my first trip to the gym, I naively imagined the outing would be the perfect way to combine physical exertion with a mental excursion into fiction. Sadly, I had fallen victim to the fashionable pictures of women kitted out in Latex and sweatbands happily absorbed in their magazines while bouncing away on cardio machines. This ideal combination of activities is not the reality, as I found when I mounted my elliptical machine and – after a frantic squabble with menu buttons – attempted to continue my most recent Zadie Smith.
Now, Zadie Smith is not difficult reading. It is lively, entertaining and intelligent, but it is not Beowulf. I readily get along with Zadie Smith in noisy airport lounges, crowded cafes and the living room over my dad’s reminiscent, albeit unfortunate, Mike and the Mechanics. However, I could not have managed even Dr. Seuss in the gym environment. The continual springing forward and backward made comprehending any writing impossible. The blaring of the latest sports scores from the telly whose channel no one was allowed to change made hearing even my thoughts difficult, and my hands were solely occupied by desperately clutching the wild waving arms of my exercise machine.
This is not to say that you should not enter the gym armed with a novel. In my mind, books have the power of Douglas Adams’ towel, and there is still a variety of useful things you can do with a book in the gym. One, you can use it to shield your nether regions on those tragic inner thigh strengthening machines that should really always be placed facing a corner. Two, you can use it to shield your face when you see the oncoming office tattletale / potential partner / sister’s best friend’s cousin you met at a picnic last week / anyone who you prefer not to know the exquisite shade of magenta it is possible for your face to turn. Three, you can use it as ammunition against the burly men who spend their time at the gym not actually exercising (like you are dutifully doing) but pacing around puff-chested, sitting at the weight machines, adjusting them to full capacity and then doing one rep.
The next time I am tempted to repeat my experience at the gym, I think I will consider just staying home, lifting weighty thoughts and exercising my mind.
- Elizabeth Anderson
Posted by Kayleigh Bohan on April 12, 2010.