Let me hear your body talk, your body talk

In February, I returned to work full time, albeit temporarily. This job will last until my kids are out of school mid-June.

I’m back in my old office, which has been terrific in myriad ways.

I could write a whole post about returning to the juggle of work and motherhood, and my current perspective. But really, I want to talk about returning to the gym and to my beloved trainer, Vic.

The building has a free gym. The one where all those years ago I pushed the red button and minced out the door.

Since I left my job four and a half years ago, I’d been working out at home or running, so this has really been my return to a gym and to a trainer.

I'd forgotten about gym interactions.

This gym is rather warm. So one of my colleagues, who works out regularly, bought two large, very blowy floor fans.

As it turns out, men were taking them into the locker room to dry themselves.

Yes. It’s quite a visual.

On Monday Vic was having me do a variety of exercises, one of which necessitated a bench. We typically do three sets of different exercises, so we weren’t using the bench the whole time. So we’d moved on to squats when a guy came over and took the bench away without saying anything.

He pulled it into the center of the room and sat down and did a set of grunty biceps curls. And then hung out flipping through Tinder. I know because I walked by.

I considered pointedly asking if we could take it for one set, but I settled for glaring in his direction. And in fact there was another bench (which he could have used), and we just moved over there.

So I was thinking I would sometime try to fart right next to him, but then after I left the gym I realized I couldn’t really tell him apart from the other 20-something guys. This means I may have to fart near all of them, one at a time.

Although since I can’t distinguish them, I might accidentally persecute a nice guy. And get a bad reputation.

So maybe not.

In any case, at the end of each workout, Vic has you lie face down a mat, and he presses on your back to align your spine.

And on a side bar, does anyone besides me have trouble with “lie” and “lay”? Lie for people, except “Now I lay me down to sleep,” which incidentally scared the crap out of me as a child because what little kid wants to die before they wake?

But grammatically speaking, that’s because you’re laying yourself down. Morally, I don’t think you should teach kids a prayer that makes them think they’re going to perish before dawn.

So I lay flat on the mat, face down. And Vic said, “Please put your left cheek on the mat.”

I just figured this was some new stretch, so I twisted my body, trying to get the left side of my butt flat against the mat. This, while trying to keep my face against the mat, was no small effort.

He was all, “What are you doing?”

And I was all, “It’s not that easy getting just my left butt cheek on the mat.”

And then he died laughing and I sure hope that the young guys were focusing on Tinder because I’m an idiot.