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Monday, March 10, 2008

The King of Sea Cows

I caved. Laziness times busy schedule equals one useless gym membership. The thoroughly awkward atmosphere at 24 Hour Fitness certainly didn't help, but I'm ultimately putting the blame for this failure on myself.

Money in my pocket, fat on my belly, I suppose.

In order to actually end my ill-fated fling with fitness, however, I had to provide the gym with a reason. As you can see below, "irreconcilable differences" was not one of the options provided.



I have the real gripe with the first highlighted one, "No longer interested in fitness," but I'll get to that in a moment. I'll quickly note that the second choice, "No longer able to work out" amused me from the standpoint that, had a freak tractor accident detached my arms and legs from my body, I'd have no choice but to tell my helper monkey to select that one. The third choice, "Out of towels/hot water" struck me as funny because, in my head, it includes an invisible appendix of "and I'm a little bitch who'd let a momentary inconvenience such as this spin me into a terminal case of the pouts." Also, this one doesn't specify the gym as being the entity that lacked towels and hot water, so I naturally picture some naïve quitter reading this and thinking "Shit, we were supposed to bring our own?"

That first highlighted reason, though, was the one that really bothered me. "No longer interested in fitness." I can actually hear the words coming from the mouth 24 Hour Fitness rep I created in my imagining of how this would have gone down in real life. "Oh, I take it you're no longer interested in fitness?" he'd scoff, casting a long glance at my Eddie Spaghetti arms. "Yes," I'd reply. "I no longer have any regard for my physical well-being. I have, in fact, lost any interest in fitness. I'm also smoking a pack a day, chewing on fiberglass instead of gum, and driving to the bad part of town so I can flip off gang members." In case you're wondering, I did pick this option, in the end, regardless of how it made me feel.

Some more reasons for quitting that I feel 24 Hour Fitness should have included:
  • Think you're too good for us.
  • Are too stupid to realize overall benefits of gym use.
  • Enjoy giving up.
  • Have realized you're not "our kind of people."
  • Under notion that you are too attractive and would like to fix that.
  • Believe old age might might be unpleasant.
  • Would like to pursue Guinness and/or other world record for fattest person.
  • Already have clothes and would rather not have to purchase wardrobe for slimmer self.
  • Spend every waking moment saving orphan babies from crazed orphan baby-eating monster, because that's literally the only good reason to forsake your physical welfare.
  • Already feel bad enough and would rather leave it at that.
Like all bad relationships, this one is totally dunzo, at least until a rise in my available funds coincides with a fall in self-esteem.

2 comments:

  1. hey i'm with you buddy.

    'cept it took me TWO YEARS to finally get up the cajones to cancel it, because i was too full of shame to face them and their prying questions.

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  2. I've thought about joining them but I will never, ever make a fitness club commitment after what happened to us in the early 80s. (BTW, Bally apparently has a $20 / month pay=as=you=go program.)

    We signed up for a three-year contract, after six months the entire chain of fitness centers went bankrupt and closed. We were held liable for our contractual monies and we also hit a patch of hard times financially. It was teh suck.

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