Monday, June 8, 2009

A Hypothetical Situation: Your Thoughts?

Let’s say you go to the gym on your lunch hour.

Let’s assume they have a lat pull machine like the one below, and hey, lat pulls are on your list of exercises to do today so you have a seat.
Now, bear with me here--let’s say there is a seated leg press machine directly to the right of the lat pull machine. It’s a little nicer than the one below because it’s “gym quality”, but the image gives you a visual that will be more useful in a moment.



What if, and this is a big “what if”, there’s a 20-something girl doing leg presses.

For shits and grins, let’s say she’s wearing shorts that are as short as the ones in the picture…but they’re not form-fitting.

By random chance, her form happens to be less than optimal so that with each rep, her legs spread as much as they bend.

To further the hypothesis, you are temporarily unable to do your lat pulls.

Why? Because you just saw…you know…”it”.

Did you really? You check yep sure enough you did now look away dammit.

You stare at the floor to your left until your peripheral vision tells you she’s done with her set.

Just when you think it’s safe, your eyes slide right to make sure you’ve got the “all clear”, but she’s still sitting there, legs open, resting before her next set.

You half-heartedly slide the pin up about 4 plates, do the quickest, most half-assed set you can do, and get the hell out of there.

You do the rest of your lifting, wondering to yourself whether you should say something.

When you go to do your cardio, let’s say she ends up on the machine next to you.

You’ve already been thinking about whether you should say something. But how the hell do you…what do you…how?

I considered saying, as kindly, discreetly, and privately as possible, “I wavered on whether I should say this, but thinking about it, I would want to know. I’ll just say that you might not want to do leg presses while wearing those particular shorts.”

But I didn’t. I couldn’t.

What would you have said? Would you have said anything?

3 comments:

TBinKC said...

I don't think you're allowed to say anything. No good can come of it. The best you could do is find a woman who works at the gym, let her know and see if SHE can tip off the poor girl without her having to actually know who saw what.

I checked: This is actually in the dictionary under "no-win situation."

kcmeesha said...

I have two choices:1) why be selfish and kill it for everyone else? 2)to continue with the hypothetical - what if that was her way of flirting with you.

JJSKCK said...

@geek - Yeah, that's about what I figured. No good way to handle it. She would be uncomfortable every time she saw me, which could lead to her quitting the gym, then gaining weight, then losing her boyfriend, then shacking up with some verbally abusive loser because she thinks he's the only one who'll take her. I can't put that on my conscience.

@m.v.-I don't know that everyone really wants to see that, but...I guess she did choose the elliptical next to me. Maybe you're onto something.