Prime Suspect

Back in 1990 I was living in a rented house in the inner city with two dude bro roommates, Doug and Jim. Doug was tall and played beach volleyball. Jim was short and wrote software. My height was coincidently the average of my two roommates. One Friday night I was meeting Jim at a favorite watering hole. I had just enough time to work out at the gym, shower then drive to the bar. It would be close so I had to hurry. Little did I know that the events of this night would unfold in such a way that I would be accused of a crime I just couldn't have committed.

I knocked out my gym routine in record time, bolted into the locker room then prepped for the shower. As I headed for the communal pen that men shower in at gyms I looked back at my locker which was open with my pants hanging and my wallet in the back pocket clearly visible. The city I lived in hosted its share of criminal activity. Still yet, I was in a hurry so I decided to just leave my locker open even though the gym provided a means to secure it.

I chose a shower to the far corner. There was no one in the communal shower area so it didn't really matter where I went. Oddly a guy entered and chose the shower to my right on the adjacent wall. I thought this was odd and a bit of an intrusion. Let me explain a piece of unwritten bathroom etiquette to women who are collectively cursed with the inability to urinate standing up.

Upright Urinals

Presented with this choice to express your bladder one takes the urinal furthest away from the middle unless someone is already pumping the bilge. In such a case you take the urinal furthest from the one already in use. The same goes for showers. You never shower next to another dude unless there are no other showers available. The guy who came into the cooperative shower chose one on the adjacent wall facing me, that is, the shower closest to mine. He also elected to stand under his shower with his back to the wall which means his jambalaya was staring right at me. By now your probably thinking that I'm a paranoid nutjob. Maybe I am, but I was buck naked in public with a nude stranger watching me while he attempted to bust off a number three in the shower.

I decided to fleetingly glance out of my peripheral vision to see what the guy next to me was doing. I wish I hadn't done that. Let's just say no one's equipment is that dirty. The minute he saw me look his way he took a step forward with his crank in his hand, bent over and put his free hand on the soap dispenser under my shower head. That was well inside my personal space. In fact my brain went into a class five proximity alert causing me to have the most intense flee response of my life. I snapped off the water then got the fuck out of there.

I rushed out of the locker room dismayed that my personal space was so overtly invaded. Throwing on my clothes I bolted from the gym. As I approached my car a rock landed nearby. I spotted some kids in an apartment complex overlooking the gym hurling rocks into the lot. Could this night get any worse? I pulled out my cell phone and dialed 911. Another rock landed very close to my car. After reporting the rock incident to the police I jumped in my car and sped off for the apartment complex bent on catching the hooligans. Unsuccessful I returned to the lot to find a police car parked haphazardly at the front of the building. As I approached the cruiser I noticed the officer behind the wheel was in plain clothes. I told him about the rock throwing incident. Oddly he never asked me my name. I assumed he knew I was the guy who called in the incident.

At the bar I recalled the story for my roommate and surrounding clientele. When it came time to pay the tab I pulled out my wallet to discover all my money was gone. That was just great. Someone stole all my cash. I immediately took the blame. After all I did leave my wallet accessible and in full view. It was a hard lesson. One I had coming.

The following Monday at the gym I noticed several signs posted throughout the facility that read,

"If you lost money at the gym on Friday night contact Detective Dan at (phone number)."

My volleyball roommate, Doug, went to the same gym. I ran into him there and asked about the signs. He encouraged me to report my loss.

"But it was my fault. I left my locker open."

"Yeah, but something happened Friday night. You better report it," Doug urged.

I found the owner's wife, a young woman who recently married the much older guy who started the gym. She was unusually cold. She was that way normally so I didn't take it personally. She reminded me of the attractive women in high school. You know, the ones that treated everyone like shit.

"Well, if you did lose money then you should call Detective Dan," She said smugly.

Instead of apologizing for a customer being ripped off in her establishment she scoffed at my inquiry as if I was bothering her or something. So I called Detective Dan from my desk at work on Tuesday morning.

"Hello, my name is Robert, and I got ripped off on Friday night at the gym."

"Oh really!" Detective Dan exclaimed.

"Someone stole $96 from my wallet."

"Oh really."

"Yeah."

"Well, why didn't you report it on Friday?" Detective Dan asked.

"Because it was my fault," I answered.

"How's that?" Detective Dan asked.

"I left my locker open with my wallet in plain sight," I offered.

"Oh really. Well, why did some people see you running out of the shower?" Detective Dan quizzed.

Great. Now I had to explain my uncomfortable men's room experience.

"Because some guy in the shower was working over his junk right next to me."

"Oh really. Some people saw you racing out of the parking lot."

"That's because some kids were throwing rocks at the cars in the lot."

"Oh really. Well, you're the only gym attendee who didn't report a theft on Friday night. How do you explain that?"

"What was I going to report? I left my wallet out, and someone stole all my money. I was taking responsibility for my own stupidity."

"You still should've reported it."

"I'm reporting it now."

"Maybe that's because you're our prime suspect."

"What! Me?'

"Yeah you!"

"Well, Detective Dan, you need to talk to the plain clothes cop I spoke to on Friday night."

"That was me," Detective Dan informed.

"Well, that was me talking to you."

"That was you?"

"Yeah, I called the cops on the kids throwing rocks."

"Oh. Good thing you called."

"How so?"

"We were going to pick you up for questioning?"

"Pick me up? For what?"

"I told you. You were the only one who didn't report a theft on Friday night."

"That's because I was taking responsibility for my own lapse in judgment."

"Who does that anymore?"

So it turned out that the theft was an inside job pulled off by an employee with a master key on a night that I just happened to leave my locker open with my wallet visible then was subjected to a dude yanking his crank in the shower and some kids throwing rocks at my car. You know, a typical night.

And that's how I became the prime suspect for the theft of my own money.

Editor's Note: Originally posted on April 6, 2017.

Race to the End

My wife the other day shocked my New Balances right off my feet with a racial epithet here in our home. She asked me,

"Can you take those colored clothes out of the dryer?"

"They're clothes of color!" I scolded.

Just when you think you know someone.

I grew up in a blue collar racist New England household. Northeast racism is intimately connected to unionized factory jobs, filled by white workers who feel minorities are lazy and use the union for protection. My father worked as a silversmith for 45 years in a factory. He used to say that black people and hispanics never got along, but he used a more colorful vernacular. He often said that the hispanics were short, and when they fought, they usually pulled a knife. The rest was left for the police, the union and paramedics to sort out.

I went to college then the military which luckily purged any racist sentiments from my head. My father retired and joined a gym which he attended regularly. When I worked out with him once, I noticed that he greeted everyone, and everyone was eager to interact with him, retelling the latest joke or funny story they heard. I discovered that my father, the guy who hadn't a single friend outside of work in decades, and often harbored racist sentiments, was the gym ambassador. It didn't matter the age, the race or gender, he knew them all by name, and they often found common ground over laughter.

During the Gulf War in the early 90's, he had a running gag that he and two other older guys at the gym were going to get called up due to their past military experience. He would say that they were in "the First Infantry Canon Fodder." The others guys went right along with it. Two of his closest friends were a black man, named George and a puerto rican, named Roman. They were both retired factory workers like my father. They helped him pull off some of the best pranks the gym had ever seen. One time, on April Fool’s my father set up this kid by telling him,

"Go ask George how his sister is doing with her swim lessons. It'll be real funny."

So the kid obliged asking, "Hey George, how's your sister's swim lessons coming along?"

George, who was in on the joke, answered, "You think that's funny? My sister drowned when she was seven years old!"

George didn't have a sister that drowned. Usually, the person being set up would fumble with an apology, and forget that my father told him to do it. It was a mean joke by anybody's standards, but that's what the generation that survived the Great Depression and world wars came up with. They all got a laugh out of it, and the dude being setup was usually suitably relieved that it was just a gag.
 

There was a lot ribbing going on at the gym, some racially oriented, but they shrugged it off. When it happened near me, my laugh was the only one that was awkward. One time a middle-aged guy called my dad and George,

"Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr."

My father said, "I must be Sammy because I'm missing an eye."

George retorted, "I'm Dean because I'm taller than you."

They roared with laughter as they crossed the racial divide. George wasn't taller than my father who wasn't missing an eye. Roman would make the sign of the cross when my father and George would go at it, and say,

"Forgive them for they know not what they do."

These old guys were friends on their own terms which certainly wouldn't meet the standards of civility today, but it worked for them. They saw each other as people first, and they laughed about everything else. My father changed with the times as his experiences broadened, and he saw people as individuals, not merely as unionized, factory workers.

There was a big Italian dude at the gym who exchanged "wop" jokes with my father all the time. He got busted for drug dealing and served ten months in prison. When he got out, word had spread around the gym about his felony conviction, so no one would talk to him. When my father saw him, he walked up, shook his hand, and said that he was glad that he was back, and that he missed him. The big man broke down in tears. When I asked my father what that was all about, he explained to me that the guy served his time, and that was okay with him.

Rap today comes with a whole set of confusing rules wrought with double standards. A slew of misogynistic and racial terms are used in lyrics in a far more general and derogatory manner than the comments made by my father and his friends. One time at the gym, during a cardio session, a newscaster on an overhead television reported,

"Seventy-two percent of the country's oil comes from abroad."

My father loudly exclaimed, "Really, I thought it came from overseas."

Of course, my father's friends all split a gut. Connie, a prim and proper retired executive, said with a smile,

"Oh, Raymond, you're so bad."

I couldn't help but think the gym was a place where my father was reliving his version of middle school. He was the guy who made them all laugh, sometimes uncomfortably, but no one ever felt like they didn't belong. He had changed when he got into a world in which he realized that everyone was pretty much like him. When he died, very suddenly on a Thursday morning, 19 years ago, an endless stream of people attended his wake. They all described my father as "their closest friend." That was an astonishing achievement for someone who for most of his life wasn't friends with anyone.

Would I want my sons to banter with their friends who are minorities like my father did with his friends and acquaintances? Probably not, but I would prefer that they manage it themselves in an inclusive way that works for them rather than living a standard set forth by our elected officials or community leaders. My son, Aidan, is colorblind like most of his generation. When he was in second grade, his African American teacher once stopped me to relay a funny story about him. She told me,

"I have to tell you what Aidan said. We showed his class a picture of a group of kids, telling them that one of their teachers was in the photo, and went to this school twenty years ago. We asked who they thought it was? And you know what Aidan said?"

Not a clue, I shrugged.

"He said, 'You, Miss Crawford.'"

To which I responded, "You're too young to have gone to this school twenty years ago."

She continued, "No, Robert, that's not it. There were no black people in the photo."

I smiled as I understood her amusement. I also got the sense that the last thing on the mind of my seven year old was the color of his teacher's skin. Like my once racist father, the first thought that came to my once racist head in regards to the photo was his teacher's age. I don't agree that bigots need to die out to change society. Everyone can change.

Despite all my mistakes as a parent, my sons won't have to.

Editor's Note: Today, colorblindness in terms of race is a micro aggression. Originally posted on November 8, 2016.

Gym Resolution

I hate this time of year. Not because of the cold or any after holiday depression. Not because leaves keep filling up the nooks around my house or because movies suck in the winter. I hate this time of year because my local gym is filled with people who are certain that this year they'll finally fulfill their New Years resolution to regularly exercise. Now, attending a gym is a good thing. God knows Americans are overweight. There's nothing more important than staying fit especially as one gets on in years.

I've been a gym rat for most of my life. I would like to tell you that I started out with a 110 pound, concrete filled vinyl weight set in my basement when I was 12 because I came from a fit family, but that wasn't the case. My story was one of those times when strife brought about strength. I don't mind sharing my gym with people wishing to live a healthful lifestyle. It's never too late to turn over a new leaf even if they collect in the corners where no one goes.

The other day a woman and her personal trainer was wandering about the gym, searching for a five pound plate. I was between sets on the incline bench.

"Here is one!" she exclaimed as she slid the plate off my bar.

"'I'm using that," I said.

"No you're not. You're just sitting there," she reasoned.

In between sets, I usually take very little time, less than ten seconds. I like to move things along. I learned this from watching Arnold Schwarzenegger in Pumping Iron back in the '70's. Arnold talked about achieving the "pump" which is when your muscles fill with blood as you work out. Sitting around for too long between sets is a common amateur workout mistake. In the brief moment that I was resting, a woman started swiping the plates I was using.

"Don't take any weights already on a bar," her trainer instructed.

A contemporary rule in the gym is to ask to take an unused plate off a piece of equipment that someone is on. In my day, plates on holding pegs were fair game. One time, a dude ripped me a new orifice for doing that. It's kind of like having to ask the person behind you on an airplane if you can recline your seat. Now, I had a noob taking plates from my bar between sets. At least the instructor interceded with sound gym ettiquette.

Many people sit on exercise equipment and flick through their phones. It's particularly annoying when that machine or bench is the only one in the gym. Yesterday, I watched a dude cluelessly wander the gym with his bulky headphones, only to come to rest on the only incline bench available. He sat their reading for what seemed like ten minutes, then he just got up and left. He could have done that in the bathroom where he might have actually accomplished something.

Hip Abductor

A lot of gym noobs make up there own exercises. I'm not sure what this guy is doing. Once I saw a woman on a hip abductor machine. She was standing facing the seat, that is, backwards with her knees on the pads. As she tried to closes her legs, a passing instructor stopped to show her how to do the exercise properly. The patron went on at length explaining how standing in reverse was actually "way better." This guy is dumbbell pressing on a leg press machine. That's either some next level full body workout shit or a total knucklehead move.

Many gym newbies who survive the longest in the gym during the year usually gravitate to big muscle exercises because they can use a lot of weight. When the focus becomes how much you lift over good form, injury usually puts an end to weightlifting. Deadlifting is a particular exercise that causes controversy in the gym, mainly from people dropping the weight or screaming while exerting. Dropping the weight on the last rep (#2) is a tactic used to call attention to one's self. There's plenty of YouTube videos of people puking while deadlifting. When you start honking up yesterday's protein drink, you're using too much weight. This guy hemorrhages from his nose. Granted these dudes are experienced gym patrons who are going for a "heavy." There's a lot of videos on YouTube of people squatting too much weight. Then there is my favorite, the butt off the seat bench press.

Another bonehead gym behavior is to "introduce" a heavier weight to push the envelop. Most workout partners of mine advocated this cartilage crushing, ligament loosening practice of slapping on a weight you want to lift, but really can't handle just yet. The goal is one or two reps with a lot of help from a spotter. Most end up like this guy, who breaks his leg.

I'm sure I piss off many people at the gym too. For example, I never wipe down the equipment I use even though there are signs advising to do so to minimize the spread of germs. The reason I pass on this activity in favor of using gloves which I routinely wash is that wiping with a paper towel, doused with disinfectant, really does next to nothing. Well, that's not true. It eats up more trees. The way I figure it in just one more week, half the patrons of my gym will likely give up.

I'll miss the entertainment certainly more than the company.