Gym Guys
Yeah, that guy.
I’ve been a gym rat for my entire adult life. I stepped into a hastily thrown together weight room at my small town Minnesota junior high school eighteen years ago and never looked back. It started out as a way to become better at the sports that I loved and now that I’m no longer playing them (any of them, sigh…) it’s a stress reliever and endorphin supplier.
In high school, it was a communal experience. My teammates and I would pile into the weight room, scream and yell, throw iron around like animals and give each other shit. It was like walking into another world. I could be one person in those confines and a completely different one the minute I left and I liked it that way.
When I went off to college, it was different. I joined a gym and was hit with the culture shock of being around adults in an environment that used to be filled only with peers. This was where I first ran into the phenomenon of “gym guys.”
I’ve known dozens of gym guys over the years. You meet playing pickup basketball or lifting weights, perhaps strike up a conversation over something or another and exchange names, thinking nothing of it.
Over the coming months, each time you run into them you say “hey”, but their name gets pushed further and further back in your mind. You have conversations about generic stuff like work, hobbies and family. Nothing too in-depth, but always friendly. You begin stockpile odd minutae about their lives- the names of their dogs, what grade their kids are in, the fact that they replaced the air conditioning unit in the back of their house last summer without incident- but it will get harder and harder to remember their name. Eventually, it’s the name is totally gone. They become just a face and partial profile. They’re part of the gym. A piece of the scenery- counter, treadmills, locker room, free weights, that guy with the lake house in central Oregon, elliptical machines, squat rack, the fella who’s wife met Joan Rivers at a casino once…
Occasionally, you see gym guys outside of the gym. It’s always awkward for both parties.
“Hey!”
“Hey.”
“What’s up?”
“Not much. How about you?”
“Ah, same old shit.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
-awkward pause as you both realize you have nothing to really say to each other-
“Well, I gotta get moving. Wife’s got me running errands.”
“I know how that goes. See you around.”
Gym guys are much like work friends. You have a limited amount in common and virtually no effort goes into expanding that commonality by either party. And that’s just fine. Everyone needs these disposable acquaintances in their life.
Then again, maybe I’m just constructing this whole sub-group of people to make myself feel better for a)not being able to remember people’s names and b)not giving a shit about what that dude I met at the gym does for a living.
Either way, it’s food for thought.
