On The Short Bus

Morning Workout
BIKE (trainer)
55 minutes (with different cadences every 5 minutes, the details of which I won’t bore and confuse you with)
Heart Rate Zone: Aerobic (Zone 1)

Afternoon Workout
LIFT WEIGHTS
45 minutes

Random Comments: I had a technology breakdown this morning. With nearly an hour of pedaling on the trainer, I was all set to catch up on my unwatched episodes of Lost, The Office, West Wing and/or a host of other shows I haven’t seen in a week or so. An hour on the trainer, captive in front of the television. If I can’t get through at least two of those shows, I’d be a disgrace to every Nielson rater in America. So I jump on the trainer and start pedaling, all psyched to delve into the latest happenings on Lost. I turn on the TV and hit the TiVo button. Whaaaa?! My eyes can barely believe what they’re seeing: not only does my TiVo list no unwatched episodes of Lost, but there are no episodes of any TV show at all, short of last night’s Daily Show. I turn off the TiVo and turn it back on again. There must be some mistake. I can’t possibly have caught up on my TV watching for an entire week. I mean, I haven’t watched any shows in at least 5 or 6 days. I look at the TiVo listing again. Still, nothing to watch but the Daily Show. Needless to say, I reveled in every one of Jon Stewart's 22 minutes. As for the rest of my ride… well, let’s just say that Good Morning America is not exactly the most motivating programming to exercise to.
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I’m retarded. You wouldn’t know it if you met me. I hide it well. In fact, you might think to yourself, Hmmm, he seems like a very intelligent chap. I would reckon his IQ is above normal. Listen to him, he’s very professional, fairly darn knowledgeable and seems to have his proverbial ducks all lined up in their silly little rows.

For the most part you’d be right in that thinking. Except, of course, for the part where I’m retarded.

I’m not perpetually retarded. Just periodically retarded. One could say that I’m simply absent-minded. But, no… I’m definitely retarded. The retardation comes in spurts. It usually hits when I least expect it. In fact, many of the times when I feel I’m acting in the professional ducks in a row manner, I do something so completely idiotic I sometimes feel I’m a direct descendent of Carl Spackler, Bill Murray’s character in Caddyshack. It’s that type of retarded.

Take the incident a few weeks ago, as a for instance. I came back from having lunch and had this funny feeling I had food in my teeth. I have that feeling often because, well, I often have food in my teeth after lunch. You see, my teeth are ever so slightly out of wack, leaving a small pocket or two here and there. Those pockets act like catchers mitts when I eat. Put ‘er right down the middle, they scream. Right in the pocket! And when I chew on that food, well, inevitably a little bit remains right there in the pocket. So anyway, I came back from lunch and felt I had food in my teeth so I snuck into the bathroom to look in the mirror and check it out. Alone in the bathroom, I stood in front of the mirror and opened my teeth in my best “I’m just checking out the health of the horse” pose. Lo and behold, a little bit of salad was awaiting me there. I looked around for something to pick it out with. No toothpick available. No business card. No nothing…I tried to dig it out with my fingernail. Didn't work, needed somethign sharper. A-ha.. I reached into my pocked and got my mechanical pencil, the one that I always carry with me in case I get hit by a flying crossword puzzle. I point the pencil at the hot spot and start picking away, trying to quickly dig the food out of my teeth before anybody walks in. After a minute or so of poking and prying, I finally get it out. Whew! I look in the mirror to make sure I got it all and… wait a minute…. What’s that? Huh?! More food? I look closer. No, it’s not food. I look back down at my pencil and see the lead peering out. I look in the mirror again. Though I got all the food out, in the process I wrote in pencil all over my teeth. The area that was once green with salad had become grey with pencil. Retarded.

Fast forward a few weeks and Cat and I are out for a weekend swim at the Culver City pool. It was a wonderful swim – challenging, exhilarating, you know, the usual. Well, we finish the swim and jump out of the water. I’ll meet you in the lobby, I say as we head into our respective locker rooms. Suddenly I remember, I forgot to bring a towel. Ummm… I think the short bus is waiting for me. I hop into the shower to wash the chlorine off of me as I try and think of what to do. Do I steal somebody else’s towel? No, not nice. Do I put on my clothes while my body is still sopping wet, in a drip n' dry sort of way? Nope, too ghetto. None of the options seemed really viable. So I did what any retarded boy would do. I got out of the shower and, wet and naked, walked over to the bathroom sink where I began pulling out paper towels, one after the other after the other. I used one to dry my right hand. Threw it away. Another for my left. Threw it away. Two more for the right arm and then the left. Then threw them away. And paper towel by paper towel I pulled out of the rack, dried myself and threw away until I managed to dry off my entire body. If I were normal, I’d be embarrassed. But I’m not normal. That’s the problem.

Today was another one of those days. I needed to go to the gym to lift weights and wanted to get it done quickly since I had a lot of other stuff to do during the day. I head into the locker room, change out of my work clothes and into my shorts, t-shirt, socks and…. no. You're kidding me. I grab my sneakers and look at them in disgust. You’re kidding me, I say out loud. In my hands sat two completely different shoes. The left was a size 8 Asics, the right a size 8 ½ Brooks. I'm such an idiot. I thought through my options. I could head back home and get a full set of shoes… but no, that would take too long and I’d lose my motivation to workout. I could sport my dress shoes as I work out. But no… that’s just plain embarrassing. Or I could suck it up and wear two different shoes. Which is what I did. So for the next 45 minutes I cruised around the gym, donning two separate, multi-colored shoes, as I went from one exercise to another. After about twenty minutes I was immersed in my workout. I even think I forgot how idiotic I looked. And then right there in the midst of the hamstring leg curl-y things, I looked down at my feet and saw a different shoe on each foot. I let out a slight chuckle and muttered to myself. Damn you’re retarded.

The good thing is that I’ve come to accept my retardation. I've become one with it. Hell, it helps define my humanity and individuality. Even my girlfriend seems to be fine with it. She says I’m retarded in a cute way. So I’ve got that going for me. Which is nice.