John Y’s Musings from the Middle: Fitness Fail

An example of an inauspicious start.

I bought an “ab bench” at Dick’s Sporting Goods tonight. It was on sale and they let me have the floor display.

They had one that was boxed that would require assembly by me when we got home—but Rebecca said, “Uh uh” and asked the sales clerk, “How hard is it to assemble? Harder than screwing in a light bulb? Would any tools be required?”

The sales clerk looked at me bemused waiting for a response. I glumly said, “Yeah, I’m not very good with light bulbs. Or assembling things. My wife is right. If you can sell us the floor display, that would make it a lot more likely I’d actually ever use the ab bench.”

The sales clerk was terrific and said, “No problem,” and retrieved the display model to the front of the store and checked us out.

I thanked him and the other sales staff standing around and said to them, “I really do appreciate this. I’ll actually use this. And in a few months, you are not going to recognize my abs. I’m serious. I’m going to be shredded!”

They laughed politely and asked if I was going to carry the ab bench to the car myself or have one of them carry it for me. It did weigh about 10 lbs. I told them, “Normally, I’d be too proud to ask for help. But since I haven’t started my workout regimen yet and there aren’t many people here this late who are looking, I’d really appreciate it if one of them would take it to the car for me.” I then turned to my wife Rebecca and added, “Unless Rebecca doesn’t mind carrying it.”

I was joking, of course, and started laughing myself. I grabbed the “ab bench,” thanked the nice sales clerks, and strode confidently to the car.

Geez, though. I gotta tell you, carrying a 10 lb bench several hundred feet to the car is a lot more draining than it sounds.

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I was going to get this exercise outfit at Dick’s tonight…. and believed it would fit me…but didn’t buy it.

Unfortunately, the mannequin is taller than me.

And I didn’t want to risk it not fitting me.