Gym-Nasties

Confession: I go to Curves. Gym of choice for the large and lumpy. Unlike other gyms, I feel a true sense of camaraderie with other Curves attendees - like we are all there for more or less the same purpose, which is NOT trying to pick up a man. And since none of us are there to pick up men, there is no competition inherent in the act of being at the gym. I don't feel judged; I don't bother judging. I just hum along to ABBA and try to keep the little green light on. All is as it should be.

Tonight, my sense of peace and equality was challenged: there was this woman. This woman was not bronzed, oiled, coiffed, Botoxed, waxed, made-up or otherwise improved upon in any way I could discern. She was just. Plain. Peculiar.

I kept looking for the candid camera, because surely no one could be that effing bizarre under normal circumstances. She flailed her limbs madly. All of them. All at once. When the words to a song even hinted at some motion, she performed that motion: from a shockingly obscene "locomotion" to turn-turn-turning with the seasons. She was the leader of the pack; she worked that teeny weeny polka-dot bikini; she was defeated at Waterloo.

And then.

She squatted down, waaaay down. Feet shoulder width apart. Reached between her legs, grabbed her ankles from behind, and from this contorted crouch began launching her massive, middle-aged buttocks in the air in time with the music.

I had a time out. I can only hope the tears of mirth passed themselves off as beads of sweat. But no one else so much as batted an eye at this woman and her crazed calisthenics! So tomorrow, an experiment: I'm doubling up my usual dose of crack and hitting the gym.