Fourth Cousin Of People You Meet At The Y

In My Locker Room

Part of a series of fun house moments from the very, very talkative locker room at my local Y...

> Dr. Bronner. Do you have a quacky old uncle who has found the secret (the secret!) to vitality at an advanced age? Well, if not, come down to the Y and dawdle in the locker room on any busy weeknight, because he's bound to show up to carry on a surprisingly one-sided conversation with some poor slob who encouraged him once, and has been regretting it ever since. You'll learn fantastic things about how pinches of cinnamon can stave off nearly anything, how often you need to wash your hands once you've been in a communal situation like this very locker room, and how whatever you are doing is wrong. After all, he read his stuff on the Internet!

> Screen Impaired. I have seen the future, my friends, and it's three inches from your nose, on a smartphone screen. My gym is now filled to burst with people who think that walking slowly while staring at a screen is, somehow, exercise... and it's just charming as heck as they wander from lane to lane on the running track, and sit and fiddle on machines in the weight room. I would gladly pay extra for a gym where the wifi does *not* work at this point.

> Young And Regrettable. Ready to despair at the future of the country? Listen in on the too-loud and can't avoid it conversations between high school pud-pullers. The only saving grace here is that, well, you probably sounded the same back then, too.

> Loose. There's a great line in an old Bill Hicks routine where the misanthropic comedian is woken from a dead sleep on a plane by some toddler tapping him on the head. "And there's this little kid... loose!" says Hicks, equating the child with wayward livestock, and dear God in heaven, that is so what it's like. I have no idea what causes small kids to decide that a man running consistent miles is someone who needs to be "raced" over a lap here and there, but it, well, does. And when these little balls of wonder fall out, gassed, they never have the presence of mind to do it in just one lane. Fun!

> Doomed. The tag-team partner of Dr. Bronner, Doomed has all of the latest on the global conspiracy (yes, yes, it's all Barack Obama and the UN's doing) to increase radiation levels to help kill off the non-elites of the world. Radiation doesn't kill wealthy people, y'know. Between this guy's doomed science and Dr. Bronner's happy talk, you can pretty much get whiplash.

Feel free to add any you might have met...