Public Locker Rooms and Bathrooms

As I finally get ready to go back to the gym, I am trying to prepare myself for the disgustingness that is sharing anything with people you don’t know.  I know being out of shape is bad for my health, but I don’t think the people at the gym are good for my health either. 

I am only motivated to go to the gym if I go right after work.  Unfortunately, this means I will be forced to change in the locker room.  I dread the locker room.  First of all, there is no doubt that it is going to smell – especially during prime after work hours.  Someone undoubtedly has dropped a load in there, and there is no combating that.  Thanks, I am glad you enjoyed your enchilada platter with extra beans during your lunch break today.  I am also glad you decided to share it with the hundreds of other people that need to use the locker room.  Nothing beats walking through the already sweat-filled workout area to get hit by the aroma of the five pound lunch you had.  (Just so you know, that 2oo calories it took you an hour to burn off on the cardio equipment is probably half of the calories of one of your enchiladas.  Congratulations, you are still fat and you helped to ruin everyone else’s day.) 

Where is the decency anymore?  Are you the person at work that goes into the bathroom that everyone has to use, and then proceeds to sit there for 40 minutes with no courtesy flush, wrecking the whole place for hours? If you are, please don’t come up to tell me how awesome it is that you did that for 40 minutes while on the clock.  I am not impressed; merely disgusted.  Furthermore, you are probably the nasty jackass who walks out of the stall, splashes some water on your hands, run those same hands through your hair and then leaves.  (This is the single most heinous offense I experience when using public restrooms.  I am sure everyone appreciates the fact that you don’t feel you are gross in any way.  Unfortunately, you are the grossest person I know.  I wish I could put a note on your back so everyone would know what you are capable of.  You deserve no respect from anyone because obviously you only care about yourself.)

Alright, back to locker rooms.  While I am trying to breathe as little as possible, the second most uncomfortable thing is the nakedness.  I want to know at what point in life a guy comes to the conclusion that other people want to see him naked.  I think it must be around 45, maybe a little bit older.  Listen old man, I appreciate the fact that you have given up on life and have no self respect anymore but just because you have reached that point doesn’t mean I want to see you taking a seat on the bench that everyone else uses with no clothes on.  I am glad you had a good workout, but is it really that hard to keep your pants on?

I know if you have ever been in a public men’s locker room you have experienced this, and you have to be nodding your head.  I can probably describe the guy you see all the time, too. 

1.       No doubt he is covered in body hair (maybe this is why he is okay with being naked; he feels his fur coat covers up enough even though it doesn’t) 

2.       Certainly he has to dry his junk with his towel in one hand, barely covering anything up, while making some kind of exasperated noise… almost requesting someone to look (of course nobody does so this leads to him taking an extra minute to finish with this)

3.       Then, instead of starting to get dressed he loses the towel completely and, I can only assume, contemplates why he has no friends (I never stay in the locker room long enough to know how long this stage lasts, but I am sure it has to be close to 10 minutes)

4.       Finally, he puts on his underwear yet shows no real urgency to put on the rest of his clothes

5.       All in all, he finally leaves – at my best guess – 30 minutes after he finishes his workout (I have tried for the life of me to figure this out and still don’t understand it.  Are you spending this much time in the locker room because you have no other male friends and think this is a good place to meet them?)

How uncomfortable is it when your locker is right next to this guy? The first thought that goes through my head is, “Do I go back out to the gym and pretend to work out for another 10 to 15 minutes? I know I can’t hang out in here and wait, and I really might scream out in disgust if there is any contact.”  Just the thought of seeing that guy next to my locker gives me chills (and not the good kind).

This guy is contributing to the overall lack of cleanliness of public locker rooms and bathrooms.  I can’t stand the abundance of hair in bathrooms.  Are you really so hairy that every time you enter the bathroom you have to cover the toilet with a fine dusting of your disgustingness?  You can’t be clean if you are that hairy.  Are you using shampoo to clean yourself… because soap probably isn’t breaking through that fortress of hair.  Oh, and let’s mix the fact that there is hair everywhere with the fact that people can’t remember to flush.  I will not even cut you a break if you decide not to flush because you don’t want to waste water.  Guess what? I am going to flush the toilet if you didn’t, and I am going to do it before I use it. IN FACT I MIGHT DO IT TWICE SINCE I CAN’T TRUST HOW LONG IT HAS BEEN THERE AND WHAT MIGHT BE LINGERING.  Now all you have done is made my day worse and wasted even more water.

Gross.

Thanksgiving (More Importantly the Meal)

This holiday has always given me mixed emotions.  As a kid it was exciting because I was getting a four day weekend.  Also, I was going to get to drink a ridiculous amount of soda on Thanksgiving.  You can’t go wrong with less school and more sugar.  Now I still get four days off, and that is exciting, but I can’t even have sugar anymore and while excited for the four days off I am less than ecstatic about actually celebrating Thanksgiving.  The biggest reason? The food.  There is nothing good about a traditional Thanksgiving dinner.  Which is ridiculous.  If we are going to be thankful and celebrate by eating a big meal maybe we should think about eating something that we actually like.  If you are starving and you say to yourself that the one thing you could really go for is a giant turkey with all the fixings then you belong in the 1950’s. 

First of all, turkey sucks.  It is always dry and the only reason people eat it other than on Thanksgiving is because it is supposed to be good for you.  You know how to tell that nobody really likes turkey and we are all just pretending? They keep trying to come up with new ways to cook it for Thanksgiving.  People have resorted to deep frying, the form of food preparation that should make everything taste better.  Still, I bet you that you take a bite and think to yourself “well this is better than an oven roasted turkey.”  Congratulations idiots and I bet you that you are also thinking how much better this fried turkey would be if it was fried chicken. 

So I am sure you are saying, “Well if you don’t like turkey, why not just eat the sides?” I am glad you brought that up.  Are you enjoying the traditional sides? I only eat the sides at Thanksgiving and you know what… if they are traditional sides I am better off not eating anything at all.  Let’s start with the stuffing.  A bunch of random grossness that spent all day cooking inside the disgusting turkey.  Everything about it is wrong.  It is mushy and full of things that shouldn’t really be mixed together but they are.  So even if I could get over the fact that it was inside the turkey while it was cooking there is nothing appealing about it – from smell to taste to the way it looks like a pile of cat vomit on the dinner table.  You know what people use it for? To eat with the turkey so it doesn’t taste so damn dry.

The other thing we use to help with the dry turkey – gravy!!!!!!!!! Hopefully it isn’t made the traditional way with leftover turkey parts to give it a good base and flavor.  (SO GROSS! Why not just take the turkey and let the dog gnaw on it for awhile to soften it up? That has to be cleaner than making gravy with leftover turkey body parts.)  Still, there the gravy is and everyone is piling it on their turkey, stuffing, and maybe mashed potatoes.  All this because the turkey is that terrible.  So we are already combining two more terrible sides to try and get this turkey down.

What about cranberries? I like fruit – in fact I really enjoy cranberries.  I feel like cranberries are good in juice form, okay in craisin form, and terrible in Thanksgiving form.  It is some disgusting paste you get served at old folks homes, school cafeterias, and prisons.  It is food but we are only steps above cat and dog food at this point.  Since I don’t really like meat, I always take a scoop or two of cranberries in an effort to not look like I despise this entire meal.

I know there always has to be some kind of potato side.  My family has always varied from sweet potatoes, which nobody likes, to some cheese butter sour cream mix that everyone eats all of.  I like potatoes so I can’t necessarily get too angry at this dish.  Still if given the choice I don’t want to eat a plate of potatoes, cranberries and bread, then top it off with a piece of pumpkin pie. Yummmmmmmmyyyyyyyyy.  A giant orange pumpkin is another thing I only thought people would eat if they were starving to death and the option was that or your friend.  (Even then I bet it is only 60/40 odds, you take one bite of that pumpkin, and suddenly it goes from 60/40 to 80/20.) 

Yet this is the meal that we wait all year to eat.  Real nice. I mean really what the hell am I being thankful for? The fact that I can afford canned goods? Originally, a turkey dinner was just a nice step up from the broth poor people were eating every other day.  (If you are currently eating broth every day feel free to tell me to go to hell and please enjoy your stupid turkey this year.)  

Still, I am pretty sure most of you aren’t that poor and you aren’t struggling to find a meal everyday.  If this is the case then why not leave the crappy, traditional Thanksgiving food in the past where it belongs? Do we just keep making it because our mom’s mom’s mom’s mom’s mom has always made this and it is tradition? Well I am sorry to say this but some traditions are meant to die.  Maybe the actual tradition was people getting together with other people they were thankful for knowing and celebrating this get together with a delicious meal.  So the turkey was good up through the 1950’s then the world started to realize there is better food out there than a big ham or turkey.  If you really like meat, how much better would a high quality steak be on Thanksgiving?  You can’t tell me you wouldn’t choose that over the turkey.  I have an idea.  Let’s go ask the people at the shelter what they will take.  Turkey? Or a really nice steak?  I put money on the steak running out first and a possible riot ensuing because the people who got there late had to eat turkey.  This is because nobody really likes these out-dated meals.  There is a reason Black Eyed Pea keeps closing restaurants.  

You aren’t sitting at work thinking about dinner for the night and thinking how awesome it would be to have a big chunk of dry turkey with some neck and giblet gravy and some gelatin paste cranberries.  You are thinking about something that is actually enjoyable.  You might even be thinking about something you wish you could have all the time but don’t because it is too expensive or bad for you.  Whatever you are thinking about when you are starving is what you should be having for dinner on Thanksgiving.  NOT TURKEY.

Broken Dreams

Kind of a downer topic to kick this whole thing off but it does help explain why the world drives me crazy.  Earlier this year a kid I know was getting ready to head off to college, and to start a conversation I asked him what his plans were.  The same question we all heard from every adult when we graduated from both high school and college.  This is the answer I get: “Well I am majoring in journalism. I want to be a sports writer.”  Stop right there.

Being the dream crusher that I am, I interrupt him.  “Why would you pay a college to become a sports writer? That is a dying industry, my friend.”  He then goes into detail about his plan to start out small… then build up some kind of Media Empire that will rival ESPN.  Hearing this, I turn to my little sister’s boyfriend, who is sitting next to me, and I tell him he needs to try and remember this moment.  Because one day we are going to see this kid again he is going to be working some random job nobody cares about.  Maybe he will be a sportswriter, but he will still wake up every day thinking the same thing we all do – how much we don’t want to go to work that day.  (If you are the one person in the world that likes going to work then please go every day, and give me the money built up from all the paid time off you didn’t use. Also, you should probably stop reading now for your sake.)  

At that moment we were on the ground floor of a dream on its way to getting broken.  It made me think back to my broken dreams coming out of high school.  When I got that standard question from adults my response was that I was planning on becoming a lawyer.  Of course, the more I would read about law school and hear about it from lawyers I realized maybe this “dream” wasn’t going to happen.  Now I realize how dumb I must have sounded to every person that asked what my plans were back then.

I think adults ask recent high school and college graduates what they are planning to do with their life not just to try and make conversation with someone they have nothing in common with, but rather as a consolation in their life to realize they will not be the only person in the world who has had their dreams crushed.  I bet that helps them get through the day.  In fact, I can’t wait to be that stupid adult figure at graduation parties that can’t relate, and asks the kids what they are planning to do with their lives. In fact, I am going to store those memories up for the day when I see the aged and bitter person that has replaced those kids.

Where does it stop? Once you are out of college, old people ask what is going on with your career.  It is such a stupid cycle. I don’t even tell people what I do now. My response is basically that I work in a cube. I know they don’t really care about it.  Are they trying to eek out more enjoyment from seeing my even further broken dreams? Maybe my new standard response will be that I work 8 hours a day to accumulate enough income to buy my weekly lottery tickets.  How sweet would that response be from some kid in high school? I would give them an extra $20 to go along with their Con”grad”ulations greeting card they already got from 30 other people solely based on the fact that they already know they have no chance.

So how many dreams have to break for you to give up hope? Should parents start early? Maybe parents are all diluted into thinking their kid is special.  Little do they know they are severely handicapping their kid’s future.  Don’t lie and tell them they can be anything they want to be.  If your kid wants to be a pro football player and he is 5’4” weighing 140lbs… maybe you should send him in a different direction.  If your genes are going to make it impossible for your little girl to be a ballet dancer, why not use your brain and tell them why it can’t happen.  Honestly, it is going to end up being better than you driving your kids around for special practices and camps.  Paying fees to other losers with their own broken dreams who are taking advantage of parents who can’t admit that their kid just isn’t going to make it as an athlete, dancer, etc.   Not only will you save yourself a bunch of misery from having to hang out with all the other kids stupid parents, you are also giving your kid a chance to find something they might actually be good at.  Don’t lie to yourself that you are being a great parent because you pay all this extra money for elite classes, leagues or whatever they are called.  If they don’t have the talent you are just setting them up for failure.  (Please don’t tell me it is going to be different when I have kids, that isn’t the subject and you are probably right.) 

People should encourage their kid to do something they actually can and the unachievable dreams won’t be there to be crushed. If some parents just took this little step, when I go to the bar on a Friday or Saturday I won’t have to listen to some jackass play in a loser band because they think they have a chance of making it big.  Listen guy or girl……..but usually guy.  You suck and your band sucks.  Feel free to keep playing in your garage with your friends.  It is a good hobby.  But if you are going to come play at the bar, please make sure your cover songs don’t suck ass and only play your original music if you want me to ask the bartender to never invite you back.  Also, realize that I am at that bar to drink, not see your stupid ass play in concert.  So don’t let it go to your head that the bar is packed.  It is the weekend and we are either tolerating your music or making a mental note to never come back if you and your crappy band are here.