So Queen Katicus bought this creampuff an iPod shuffle for her birthday and its maiden voyage was to the gym earlier this week. My previous personal listening device was a no-name walkman that I bought at the Bay in Winnipeg for $40.00 during the Air Canada strike of 1998. You had to TAKE THE TAPE OUT AND TURN IT OVER to change sides and only one of the headphones worked, so even with my one pathetic tape of “workout music” cranked as loud as it would go, I could still hear all the snorting and horking and heavy breathing happening around me in the elliptical bay at the Y. With the shuffle, it was just me and Stevie Wonder. And then Stevie Nicks. And then the Bulgarian Women’s Choir, because that’s how the shuffle works.
I could tell when I walked into the Y that my shuffle was being eyed by all and sundry. As a creampuff at the gym, I am occasionally self-conscious but with my shuffle on and “Superstitious” funking in my ears, I fairly strutted about the place and nearly tore my deltoids out in my efforts to stick with the beat. And then, I got on the elliptical machine.
As I elliptercized my cares away to Spirit of the West, I noticed that my shuffle was getting even MORE attention from everyone around me - people next to me on the machines, people across the room on the bikes, the lady with the white nylons and bodysuit who reads the paper on the stairclimber. I made sure to suck my stomach in and puff my chest out proudly as the shuffle bounced against it. As one song finished, however, I heard kind of a short, screaming noise, like a pterodactyl, coming from somewhere in the room. It gave me pause, but then the next song began and I thought no more about it, until I noticed, during a quieter moment in the song, that the short, screaming pterodactyl noise was still happening underneath the song. In fact, it was happening EVERY TIME I MOVED MY LEFT FOOT. I paused the shuffle and sure enough, the angry pterodactyl continued to scream from beneath my sneakers. I was about 3/4 of the way through my workout and had to make a decision:
a) Would I continue grinding the pterodactyl until either the machine gave out or my time was up?
b) Would I just get off immediately and slink away, clinging to my shuffle and my last shreds of dignity?
c) Or, would I compromise and retain my creampuff pride by releasing the pterodactyl machine and finishing my workout on the free machine next to it?
I chose c) and breathed a sigh of relief when the new machine worked silently for the last few minutes of my workout. Just before I finished, a slim young gal sidled up to the ellipterdactyl and hopped on to begin her workout and the fucking thing DIDN’T MAKE A SOUND.
Dark chocolate is more sophisticated but I am a hick and like the milk.
