While my friends add their “thankful” posts to Facebook daily in November, I am choosing to do something different. Complain. Sure, I can choose thankfulness; I’ve played “The Glad Game” along with the best of them. But that was last week.
So far this week, I’ve managed to out my husband for criticizing my clothes, whine about work, complain about construction, and today (in compliance with the other accidental alliterations I’ve managed to include so far) I intend to enlighten my health club that eight is not enough.
(“Eight Is Enough” did make a good title for a TV show that, alliteratively, ended in the early eighties. But, dear Gainesville Health & Fitness Center, eight is NOT enough for the number of showers provided in the women’s locker room.)
On any given day at my health club, people fight for parking spaces, locker space, workout equipment, and then the showers. The owner of the health club does absolutely amazing feats in this comparably small town: three state-of-the-art facilities that are always expanding services or improving in some way. Unfortunately, the “if you build it they will come” philosophy works for fitness centers as well as baseball fields.
Joe Cirulli, the CEO and founder of this health club, has built a gym of dreams. (I have watched it move locations and grow better and better since 1989, when I purchased an extravagant graduation gift for myself: a health club membership. I have gotten more return on that investment than any other. Plus I credit that membership with my ability and motivation to shower daily.)
Therein lies the rub. I am not alone in this.
Most days, getting a shower at the health club is a bit dicey. The showers aren’t dicey (they are actually quite lovely), but the chance of getting one in a timely manner is. We have eight showers — seven regular stalls and one shower equipped for women with handicaps. The club has been improving the locker rooms for a good eight months, and while what we have is functional, the best is yet to be. (At least that’s what one of my friends told me after she sneaked into the updated men’s locker room just before it opened. She says we will be “so pleased.”)
Daily, if I don’t cut my workout five minutes short, I wait for a shower. (If I do cut my workout short, then those who don’t will wait for a shower.) The old locker room had eight showers — also well-used and overpopulated. We anticipated an increase with the advent of the new locker room, but floor managers have told us this is not the case. Eight is enough, apparently.
I beg to differ. Today I not only stayed until the end of class but I also helped put away equipment we used. By the time I entered the shower area, a full 10 women were in line waiting for a shower. My friend and I, wearing bathing suits as we had just exited a water class, decided to ditch the line and hit the open shower poolside. I lathered up, a bit self-consciously, but desperate times were calling for desperate showers. After displaying my shower habits to the pool population, I walked back to the locker room, where women were still waiting in line.
As I left the club, I did leave a plea in the Suggestion Box for extra showers. I mean, if you build a health club of dreams and the people do come, you need to build more showers too.
Just before I left, one of the women in the locker room said, “And New Year’s resolutions are right around the corner.”
We all know what that means.
(Please don’t skimp on the showers.)
Posts for NaBloPoMo 2015:
- Why I love my hairstylist…
- To NaBloPoMo or not to NaBloPoMo? That is the question…
- No AC November…
- That dubious gift of an hour…
- I can’t wait to be discovered…
- Once an English teacher, always an English teacher…
- Of mice and men (or when you give a mouse a cookie)…
- When you replace people with possessions…
- Do what you know is right…
- When your eyes are bigger than your weekend…
- Attempting “The Glad Game”…
- When the Christian life is a bit too much like a political debate…
- Vertigo: When the world around you begins to spin…
- How our Mitsubishi van became blue…
- If she only knew…
- When everything feels like straw…
- Construction criticism (or where have all the detours gone?)…
- Don’t skimp on the showers…
All Things Work Together 
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