West of Mars -- the Meet and Greet

So Molly and I are out shopping and all when this girl comes up to me and asks if I work out at that chain gym. The thirty-minute workout place.

"No," I tell her.

"Oh," the girl says. She tells me that she's just started going there and she wants to look like me in a few weeks. That's what they promised.

I look the girl over. She's not fat, but she's soft. And round. Okay, maybe she's fat, but not a tub. But no way, no how is she going to look like me in a few weeks, no matter who promised.

I take a minute and explain I'm an exercise instructor and I've got my certifications and I go to advanced learning and I'm on the cutting edge of exercise. That's why I look like this and yes, I'm proud of it.

The girl says okay and that she hopes the thirty-minute place will make her look like that, too, even though I pretty much just told her that it won't.

Which means, I tell Molly when the girl goes, we've got to go check out these thirty-minute places and see exactly what they're selling.

So we do. We go in and the girl at the front desk -- who looks good but not great, like the place has paid off for her but she's not on my level. No way, no how -- asks if we usually come at a different time because we don't look familiar.

I explain to her that I'm an instructor at a few gyms in the area.

"Oh!" she says all perky, but then she gets all sad. "Sorry, but we're not hiring."

I try again. I tell her I've been hearing good things about this place and I'd like to see what it's like.

"Oh!" she says, all excited like she was a second ago. "You'll want to talk to our membership services!"

I explain again. I just want to talk to a fitness professional. You know: pro to pro.

That confuses her. I try to explain it again, but Molly jumps in. "Can you get whoever's in charge?"

So I get to talk to this Traci chick, who shows me what's going on. Omigod, I can't believe some people say this is exercise. All this weight equipment in a circle, and women moving their way around the circle. But they're not working, not the way the women in my classes work. They're going fast, which Traci tells me is the way to make it harder. But for people who are working harder, most of them don't have red faces. A lot of them are sweating, but there's more than a few who're chattering away like this is some coffee shop they're in. If my students did this, I'd ask if this was a social club or a workout. They'd say workout and wait for a break. But here, there's these women laughing and barely touching their machines for anything but balance. It's sad. I can see a few who are trying hard to focus and a few more who are in their zone, but the talkers, they're messing the whole place up. You'd think someone would ask them to get off the equipment while they talk. I do, when I go lift at any of my gyms.

When we leave, Molly asks me what I think of the place. I tell her the truth: it's great for people who've never worked out before and who need to get started. Or for people who want to pretend they're working out.

Molly says it takes all kinds, and she's right. I'll take the kinds who show up to sweat, the ones who put passion into their workouts. The ones who know that getting a body like mine means diet and hard exercise. That's how you get a body like mine.

When those talkers are ready to figure that out, I'll be at my gyms, teaching my classes. Just like always. After all, once you've got a body like this, you need to take care of it, right?


Ahh, Pam's quite the character, isn't she? A lot ditzy, not terribly smart and definitely full of herself. That's probably why she's not here more often. If you'd like to catch up on her past adventures as a ShapeShifter groupie, click here. That'll take you back to her character sketch page, and will link you from there to the fiction that's been posted here in the past.

Labels: creative writing, fiction, Pam, stereotypes, Sunday Scribblings