About two weeks ago, I was at the gym. It was at my normal time, around 7:30 pm. I work until 6 and have to drive an hour just to get home. I get to my house at 6:56, sit for a second in the driveway before I turn the key in the (remix to) ignition, open my door, and head inside. I firmly plop myself onto my bed, and lay there for about 5 minutes. I then realize I should probably change because I need to go to the gym, and I stay there any longer, I won't even go. I hurry up change my clothes, get my two scoops of protein in my blender bottle and am on my merry way.
Pulling up to the gym at roughly 7:24 pm, I get out into the frigid cold and make my way to inside. Walking through the doors, I'm greeted by the front desk workers who are are always too happy to see you. They scanned my card, and said, "have a good workout, man!" I hesitate and fight back the urge to say, "you too" out of habit. I settled for the more conventional, "thank you," and made my way to the locker room.
Upon my walking into the locker room, I slid off my duffel bag strap off my shoulder, placed my bag on the bench, unzipped it, and began sifting through the items. I pull out my headphones, my blender bottle, my wrist straps, but my water bottle is nowhere to be found. "Son of a..." I thought to myself. I couldn't believe I had forgotten my water bottle at home. It was sitting on the counter waiting to be packed, and I left it sitting there. "Well, looks like drinking fountain it is, tonight."
I staked my claim at one of the racks and began my workout. As it went on, my thirst became greater. Finally, I got up, and walked to the fountain. This made my workout go longer, because water breaks aren't exactly the "norm." There were two downsides to walking over to the drinking fountain: 1) I could risk losing my spot. 2) I would have had to exert precious energy. Energy I needed to finish my workout.
From my first water break of the evening, I had ended up taking a couple more. And by this time, it was 8:22 pm. My workout was nearly done. I was finishing up with some biceps and triceps, because, ya know, #armdayeveryday. I re-racked my weights in the correct numerical order, because I'm OCD like that, and began my descent back to the locker room. I walked up to my locker, opened the door, grabbed my bag, my coat, put my sweatpants back on and walked out.
There was an open table near the door and by the front desk. I sat the bag down, grabbed the blender bottle with the protein powder in it, and headed to the fountain. Walking to the fountain, my stomach began to rumble from what I thought was because I was hungry. That wasn't actually the case. I was just gassy. I noticed I was gassier than usual, even though I had used the facilities twice that day. I got to the drinking fountain, opened the top of my bottle and began to fill it up.
As I stood there, waiting for the water to fill my bottle, I felt another grumble in my stomach. And this one came with a warning. I clench my cheeks together, as tight as possible, but it was leg day, so that wasn't very tight. So due to my inability to hold anything in, I let one slip by. I accepted the fact that it wasn't going to happen regardless, but by letting it out, I had no clue that it was going to be as bad as it was. And just as it was finishing, some kid had walked up beside me to use the other drinking fountain and put his face right in it. The smell had made its way to my nostrils. It was bad.
Shame came over me, I couldn't believe what I had just done. I quickly walked away in fear of confrontation. And as the night wore on, I couldn't help but think that I had ruined that kid's gym experience forever, or that I taught him a lesson to always bring a water bottle.
