DRIP, DRIP...

     I totally forgot to tell you about my outing with Mary last Sunday! Since the onset of the colder days, the pool where we've been going is closed, and so... I get to spend my Saturdays and Sundays in peace and shameless laziness! Right? 
    
      We-e-ell, Mary has other ideas. She started her Weight Management Program already, so we can't go out to eat anymore. She decided that we can get a gym membership and swim there! 

       Since that one time a few years ago when I paid for two years of gym membership and went to exercise, maybe, five times, I avoid gyms like I would a snake pit! Once you sign a contract, you can't go back, you can't switch it over to someone else. All you can do is pay, even if you do not use their facilities. You would be surprised, how many people do that: pay for the gym membership, happily stay home on the couch and UN-happily fork out the fees. 
  
        "But," - Mary said, - "The difference is that, we will do it together!" I incline to agree, but a nagging feeling in my gut tells me that I will be sorry for giving in to her!
  
        So, to make a long story short, we went to a gym last Sunday. Our plan was to swim or just walk in water for about an hour and then go to a movie theater nearby to see THOR. I would never in my life go to see Thor, but Mary seemed set on that idea.
    
      They say, when humans make plans, God smiles. It took us half an hour to register for a free pass to use gym for a week. Half an hour later we realized that we had just twenty minutes to spend in the pool. "That's OK," - said Mary, the eternal optimist, - "Twenty minutes will be enough!"

   

They weren't that good looking!

       Here comes another "we-e-ell". It took us ten minutes to get undressed and ready. The pool turned out to be divided into the lanes going along the long side of it, with water coming up to my chin right at the get-go. It meant that we could not walk for a long distance in it: I would've drowned! Mary and I shuffled our way just some ten feet forward and - ten feet back, I - on my toes like a ballerina, since I don't like chlorine in my mouth. Mary was talking about the Jacuzzi, but as we looked over at it, it was filled with Japanese men, who were staring back at us, their eyes going out of their sockets at the sight of our  proportions. We looked at each other and shook our heads: "NO!" - and then burst out laughing. 
At my suggested  picture of  us getting into the Jacuzzi with the Japanese men and drowning them because the water level will dramatically increase, Mary laughed so hard that she was in danger of drowning herself! 
   
       Less than twenty minutes later we had to get out of the pool. We went to the showers and then to the locker room to get dressed. 

      My locker wouldn't open! I, probably, did something wrong, and now I was stuck! I asked a lady who was already dressed to go and ask some female gym employee to come and help us. She came back and said that there were no female employees there at that time. I covered myself with a towel that seemed very small at a moment, and went to the main gym hall myself. I could see myself in my mind's eye: a round, pathetic figure in a swimming suit with a modest skirt that rode up in the back, leaving a dripping trail behind her as she went. 
                                
     I am very grateful to a gym's manager for keeping a straight face as we talked. He eyed my wretched frame and decided to give me a key that opened all the lockers in that room. Otherwise, we'd have to wait for all the ladies there, in different stages of undress or nudity, to finish and leave. 
   

       Everything else that afternoon was an improvement on my gym experience. We went to see Thor, sat through all the closing credits so that Mary could satisfy her obsession with the details (of course, we were rewarded by a small tid-bit of the movie right at the end of the credits). I thought that I could now go home, have my lunch and dinner (I skipped both) and get, finally, warm, but Mary said: "What? We are going back to the gym to sign up for the membership!" And so we went! I think, the man there either thought that he would never see us again or hoped that he wouldn't. Nevertheless, he took care of us, and now we are the proud subscribers to using their facilities. God help us! God help them too...