The Young, the Restless and the Considerate
Yeah yeah yeah. It’s been a while. Tell me about it.
Anyways, a few weeks back on a day off, I went to the gym for a run [1] in the middle of the day. Usually, if I don’t go in the evening after work, I go in the mornings. The evening crowd consists mostly of men on the weights, who run to the mirror or over to their friends to flex/pose after every few repeats, and the televisions are mostly set to news channels or sports channels. In the mornings, it’s a lot of seniors and university students who are all in WAY better shape than me, and the televisions are on news channels or things like TLC or the Food Network or HGTV. I’d never been in the middle of the day, so I was curious about both the crowd and the television viewing preferences.
The crowd was a lot of middle-aged men in great shape, mostly on the treadmills, ellipticals or stair-stepper thingy [2]. The televisions? All but one were on soap operas. I kid you not. Which is how I ended up watching The Young and the Restless for the first time since I was, like, 15. I recognized two characters [3] but still managed to get sucked into the plot despite not knowing who anyone else was [4] and ended up staying on the treadmill slightly longer than necessary to make it to a commercial break.
As soon as I had wiped down my machine [5] and moved on to the elliptical, the guy on the treadmill next to me grabbed the remote and changed the channel to a sports show. I don’t know how long he’d been enduring the soap, but I really appreciate the fact that he waited until I left to change the channel, because I’m not sure I would have let him change it while I was watching.
[1] I’ve been running almost four months now, and have thrown in work on the elliptical now too.
[2] No idea what it’s really called.
[3] Completely misidentifying one of them – I thought it was Cricket but it was actually Nikki. Thanks Dr. Beth!
[4] Nikki! Caught Rafe and Adam! Making out! And Jack! Doesn’t trust Rafe not to screw over the Newmans somehow! (I think – it was a few weeks ago)
[5] I am a big fan of gym etiquette!