calm down, little man.

one day last week when missy and i were at the gym there was a minor holdup with accessing the locker room as a male worker had to go in there with a lock cutter and open some girl's lock, so no women could be in there. it became a long to-do over nothing. finally as we were being held outside with a few others, this twerpy little guy who looked like he was in high school appeared, assuring us that he was a manager and he would allow us into the locker room. he did this all with a booming voice and a flourish of hands, i suppose to prove how 'in charge' he was. we laughed about his napoleon complex later on.

little did we know.

so yesterday afternoon i was working out in a pretty empty gym, as you might imagine it would be during the weekday. at most, there were about eight of us in there. 8 of us for about 150 machines. i was a good 40 ft. away from the nearest gym-goer, and had an entire row of ellipticals to myself. about halfway through my workout i took off the sweatshirt i had been wearing and placed it over the handlebar on the machine next to me. within minutes, napoleon appeared in front of my machine, motioning for me to remove my headphones.

he informed me that we were not allowed to place articles of clothes on the machines, as it was a hazard to other guests. i smiled politely and apologized, saying i would place the shirt over my own machine. he said no, this too was a hazard. i offered to place it off to the side, on the ledge against the wall. he said that extra articles of clothing were NOT allowed ANYWHERE on the gym floor and i MUST go put my sweatshirt in the locker room. i said fine, and he stalked off.

while annoyed at this pointless intrusion - had i not been sweatily bounding up and down in front of him the entire time i might have remembered to point out about how the previous night when the gym was crowded someone had their coat in front of their treadmill, or how people have towels the size of my shirt hanging off their bikes all the time, so then those must be hazardous, and how come they don't have this rule posted anywhere - i also got a nice chuckle out of how ridiculous the exchange must have looked. he was definitely about two feet shorter than me when i was up on the machine. scolded by smurf.