So with the weather taking a turn and running season finished, it’s time to start hitting the indoor gym. I prefer the nice weather and running outside to the gym but there’s really not to many alternatives to staying in shape in the fall/winter. The main difference between the gym and solitary running is the interaction with people. Now my prime time social skills are between 3-6 beers. At this time I’m coherent, I’m still quick witted, and I my listening skills are still intact. Between beers 6-12 I can still function but listening skills fade and instead of thinking, I just say the first thing that pops into my brain. Anything more alcohol than this and it’s unrecognizable blabber, although I could probably still function 15+. Now what sobriety level did I purposely leave out? Being sober.

Naturally when you go to the gym you are sober so interaction is done on a sober level. I have no problem dealing with customers at work when I’m sober but real social interaction is not my forte. Everything for me just always feels forced and it’s like I’m pretending to care. So I obviously wouldn’t be writing about this unless something happened. So I try to make as little eye contact as possible in the gym to avoid conversation but I caught a straight gaze right into the eyes of a girl I’ve known for a long time growing up. She obviously knew me and was wearing head phones so I think she was trying to play it off with a smile and hoping I’d go away but with an obvious acknowledgment of “I know you”, I wanted to say hello. So I walk over and she takes off her head phones and I open with “I haven’t seen you in a long time and I didn’t know you come to this gym…she answers, I ask “where are you living?” She replies with “the city”, I remark with a brilliant follow up “how long have you been there?” She looks at me and says “3 years…” So now I’m thrown off because I’m sure I’ve seen her in the past three years and knew she lived in the city but I couldn’t just walk away on this oddball question. Her sister was in my grade so now I’m scrambling for topics and ask about her. I knew she was married and just had a kid so I asked about that and she told me her younger brother just got married and has a kid on the way so I make another awesome remark “so you’re the odd person out in your family whose not married.” Not only do I use the word person, which I purposely did instead of man but she said she also has a younger brother whose not married yet which I should have known. My questions also was like I was implying “whats wrong with you, you’re not married yet?” So after that I decided it was best to cut my losses and exit stage left. She said tell your family I said hi and I think I muttered something like “yeah right, sure I will” in a sarcastic way that I didn’t really mean to come off like. Another hilarious tidbit was this was the sister of the girl who I saw in Sam’s club and gave one of my best lines ever when I asked her and her husband if they live in a house? This obviously brought about some dumbfounded looks.

Ahh, back to the gym. A place where I get to demonstrate my impressive social skills amongst people who I rarely ever see. It’s funny too because there’s no reason I should behave like a weirdo but once I feel like the conversation is turning or has already turned or I’ve run out of things to say, I start to panic and then usually just make things worse by looking for a way out. I’m actually not so much of a retard but this was pretty close to reality. I’m considering sending this link to the girl so she can read it and see how I perceive situations. I’m sure that would make for an interesting human experiment and see if she saw things this way. She should probably write an entry from her perspective to see if she saw things my way.