C.M. Burns

Every week (mon-fri), I get up at the hemorrhaging crack of dawn to make myself feel confident that I made a wise investment in my gym membership. What makes these trips so special (aside from the fact that I've lost 18 lbs - yes, I do feel better and I AM quite proud of myself, thank you for asking), is that there are some pretty, um, let's call them "special" people that also share my morning routine. I don't mean that these people are mentally challenged (depending on your definition of the term), but I'd say there are a few that probably have someone living with them so they don't hurt themselves. The subject of today's blog is one of those such persons, except he tends to forget his care provider at home. He probably does something crafty, like turn off his nurse's alarm clock the night before (cause at his age, he can't sleep before 2:00), and sneaks out in time to enjoy sharing a locker room with me. I also must mention that when I first saw him, I couldn't help but notice a striking resemblance to Mr. Burns. For those of you who don't know who that is (and you were born about the same time as the subject of my blog), he's the guy pictured at the left and is Homer's boss on The Simpsons. If you haven't heard of the Simpsons, then you might as well crawl back in your hole and forget reading the rest of this...not because it has anymore to do with the Simpsons, but because you'll be old enough to be offended by the following material.

Let me give you a bit of background on this particular fellow. Oh, and first a disclaimer: I don't mean to make fun of the elderly because I'm not so naive that I don't realize that someday I'm going to have some young a-hole blogging about all the wacky crap I do, but this guy kind of needs talking about...I've told my wife that if I end up like this, I'm going to have a living will that will ensure that someone actually kill me. Okay, back on track: I used to swim on Tuesdays and Thursdays (I play racquetball on those days now), and the pool at our gym is big enough that there are two roped off lap lanes and the rest of the area, although a few feet shorter, could easily support 3 more lanes. So, if you aren't a lap swimmer, the polite thing to do is share the remaining open area with the rest of the swimmers. There aren't a lot of other swimmers at 5:30 in the AM, but my geriatric buddy is usually making attempts at back and breast strokes at this time. I have no idea when he gets there, but I'm pretty sure he's waiting outside with a bran muffin and a cup of coffee when they're unlocking the doors. Needless to say, he isn't the straightest arrow as arrows go, and one of my complaints about him earlier on was the fact that every other swimmer had to dodge this fellow as he swam zig-zag patterns. Then, to make matters worse, he has a particular spot in the locker room. This spot isn't very big because there's a bench that takes up the middle of the isle to get through. This intelligent fellow always parks his old butt on the very end of the bench parallel to the bench and has his bony knees and his huge (I don't know how he lifts it) gym bag taking up all the room on both sides of that end of the bench, so everyone has to walk around the next isle of lockers to access the ones behind him. He does this religiously and I finally gave up one day and switched to a different locker on the other side of the gym.

Here's where it gets creepy. This morning, I actually saw him in the weight room. I never see him in there, and I'm thinking he must be sprucing up for some hotty he picked up out at Pleasant Acres. He looks more confused today then most days, but I'm figuring it's because he probably pooped himself trying to squat the bar (for those of you who never had to lift weights in high school, that would be a whopping 45lbs). So, I actually only saw him do one set of something - the machine where you rotate your legs at the knees to lift a weight with them (hey I'm not a professional, so I don't really care what the machine is really called), and then he just kind of meandered about the rest of the time I was there...which was another 20 minutes. I didn't think anymore about it until I was in the showers. He came in and was still wearing his tighty-whities. He starts the shower up and gets under the water with his underwear still on. This doesn't really phase me too much, as I just figure he's shy about his manhood and I go back to scrubbing my hair. Okay, are you ready for this? When I turn back around, the guy has taken off his underwear (wait for it) and they are in his hand, all sudsed up, and he's washing his body with them. I very distinctly remember that I was glad all the water made it loud in there because I'm sure that if everyone had turned the shower off at the same time, they would have heard the "oh, lord" that audibly escaped my lips. And (yep, there's whip cream on this piece of pie), when I got done fixing my hair and brushing my teeth, I walked past him (on his bench) and noticed that he had put the wet shorts back on and was most definitely going to wear them for the day. I guess I'm probably just not giving him credit on how resourceful he is.