Wednesday, August 2, 2017

Good morning crew,

I almost got into a fight last night at the health club. Over the stupidest thing, too. And I blame the kids at the taekwondo school.

Almost one entire wall in the school's dojang (or practice area) is covered in mirrors. This is so the students can see how much they look like Jackie Chan while they are practicing. But what it is in reality is a magnet for their grubby, grimy, sticky, little hands.

I don't know what it is, but those kids cannot resist putting their filthy little paws all over that glass. And since I am the one who ends up cleaning it more often than not (one of the privileges of being a black belt instructor), I am constantly yelling at them to keep their hands off the glass.

So much so that it has practically become a filler word for me. Instead of 'Umm' or 'You know' or 'like', I will say, 'Keep your hands off the glass.' It's a reflex.

At the health club, which is about ten times the size of the taekwondo school, the mirrors are more strategically placed; mostly in front of certain machines and the free weights area.

I was standing on front of one such mirror last night, doing my trapeze squat-curls, when a guy stepped in front of me, placed both of his hands right on the stupid glass, and began doing calf stretches. Mind you, this was with about 500 feet of wall available without mirrors.

So without thinking I instinctively yelled, "Hey!"

But before I could get out, "Get your hands off the glass," he turned his massive, swollen shoulders around with the stately momentum of the Titanic turning through icy waters, and pointed a quivering, rippling slab of about 52 inches of chest-front at me.

Resting one set of hairy knuckles on the ground, the silver hair on his back standing up in defiance, he fixed a pair of beady, bloodshot eyes on me and said, "Yeah?"

Oddly enough, the very next thought that went through my head was whether or not I had my medical insurance cards on me, because they were sure to ask for them at the emergency room.

But with the lightning fast thinking that comes with a crisis situation I espied a barbell sitting on the floor right behind him and said, "Are you using that?"

He glanced at the barbell, then back at me and said, "Nope, help yourself."

Picking up the weight I turned around and walked straight out of the room.

Sure, at the time it was kind of tense, and if I'm being perfectly honest, even a little scary, but looking back, if I had said something stupid that ended up pissing this monster off, I don't know, I think I might have been able to take him.

Laugh it up,

Joe

joe@gophercentral.com

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