I would like to thank the woman at the gym who was paying no attention to anything at all and ran right into me, jamming her giant German arm right into my balls and making me take a knee. I really would.
It’s not every day that the world gets your attention so completely and abruptly without any serious damage. Without a wrecked car or a trip to the ER. Got my attention and made a point.
Walking from the drinking fountain to the Men’s room, still in my street clothes. Trying to gear up for this whole thing, the gym. Work hard and smile and play nice but really I’m not up yet. Not all the way. Resenting that I had to call and reserve a bike for freaking SPIN CLASS that I hate but is the only intense cardio activity I can do after my trashed knee and hip disallows the sweaty wonderment that is running. People will actually wait in line to get into a spin class that I have to drag myself to. And unless I reserve it the second I get there, it’s gone. Reserving some shit I don’t even want to do! How did I get here?
Thinking that and various other dark self-doubting and self-loathing things. Hey, I’m not a morning person and before 10 my mood is really a crap shoot. Mostly just crap. Is my friend actually mad at me. Should I sign the girls up for stupid volleyball, even now it may be too late, two months away there’s a waitlist for that too. What am I doing with my life? Why am I still fat with as much time as I spend hyperventilating in this well-adorned shithole? Those kind of early morning, unproductive, self-flagellating kind of distractions.
I am, however, paying attention to where I am going. My mind may be flitting from tree to tree like an angry monkey, but I am keeping my eyes on the road for Christ’s sake.
But not her. Not my Thursday morning greeter, in German house-frau shape. Stout and muscular headed right for me in the shared walkway between the restrooms. But it’s double wide, and I’m all the way on the other side and shit she’s staring at something or someone real good and she’s gonna… OOOPFfee!! She got me Lou!! Right in the gut and between the pockets. We weigh about the same, but she’s shorter and she had a head of steam and goddamn that hurt!
“Oh I’m so sorry,” she said so sweetly, putting her hand on my slumped shoulder. “I was looking the other way.”
She said it with such abject sweetness and sincerity, with more of a confession than it otherwise deserved, that it really struck me. Hard, in the balls of my mind. Like I had never heard that phrase before. I was looking the other way. Shit so was I. So do I half my life.
“No worries,” I said with a teenage crackling voice, smiling and trying not to act like a dramatic bitch and pass out. Medic!
She continued on and I shuffled to a bench in the men’s room and waited it out.
Looking the other way. I was looking the other way all morning. Not looking at things in general another way. That would be good. Just looking the other way. Thinking about everything except what was in front of me. Not letting Lilah read to me before school because we were in a hurry. Snapping at C over something small and stupid. Worrying about people I wouldn’t see today, things I had no control over, things that had yet to transpire. I may have been watching where I was going but wasn’t really involved in my day at all. I wasn’t really paying attention and I should be even more sorry then she was.
Thank you, abnormally stout and powerful gym lady, for punching me right in the balls. Thank you for looking the other way.