My perpetually despondent gym career hit a new low at the YMCA this morning when, while struggling with an assisted chin-up, I spotted an elderly gentleman come in with an oxygen tank on wheels following him closely. Now, since I've returned to the Y after six or seven years in absentia, let me make a brief correction to my gym story-excuse: not all of the elderly people at the Y, and there is quite a large population of those proto-zombies there, can lift more weights than I can. Like, today, for example, there was this corpulent woman in her mid-to-late fifties, and she got exhausted after doing a plate and a half on the chest press. (Oooh, that sounds dirty — yet kind of nasty when used in the same sentence with "corpulent woman in her mid-to-late fifties"...)

But anyway, back to the old man of the hour. First, he's on the exercise bike, so there's no real basis for a Jay-to-elderly-man-with-personal-oxygen-supply comparison.... Part of me hoped he'd pass out so I could stop feeling insecure and taunt his exhausted body: "Boo-yah! Who's your gym master? Me, bitch! Yeah!" (I was going to write "drop dead" instead of "pass out," but I'm afraid that my reader doesn't share my moribund sense of humor here.) Next up, he's doing the pullover, which is a retarded machine — it's like an ab-roller with a seatbelt — and besides I'm too busy trying to figure out if that's Meghan Mele on the Stairmaster and if it is her, whether she remembers my name or is just smiling at me to be friendly and either way whether I should go over and say something that would probably sound awkward and pathetic to her. That reminds me, there's some high school yearbook pictures I need to look through.

And then, he starts on the chest fly and I count him doing one, two, three, four weights. That's the same number I do! He isn't stronger than me! Or, to put it another way, I am as strong as an old man who can no longer rely on the atmosphere to keep him alive.

Next time... next time, Jay, you're doing sixty sit-ups and twenty chin-ups and seven plates on the chest press.... I'll beat his emphysemic ass in weightlifting yet!

Also, there's this other at-least-in-his-sixties guy at the Y who does about fifteen plates on the chest press. He challenges my masculinity, but, you know what, I think he's on steroids. Maybe I should report him.