CPUnk I write right. Right? Aye.

Bullies

So, there’s this guy who works at the gym — he looks just like my num­ber one bully grow­ing up. He’s all flexed out, has blond hair, and a bit of a Norwegian/Viking look to him. Of course, that makes me just want to smack him down when I see him.

Well, today, I had a chance to inter­act with him and it ended up being a lit­tle cathar­tic. I was doing the assisted pull-ups, because i’m a big wee­nie and can’t lift myself up all alone, and he was doing reg­u­lar lifts right next to me with, I kid you not, a 110 pound dumb­bell strapped to a belt and dan­gling between his legs (I was actu­ally a lit­tle wor­ried for his manly bits, that thing was the size of a small car and just swingin’ around on a chain — but what­ever, he’s a big boy … and after all — he looks like my bully — so it should smack him, no?).

So, I get the ulti­mate moment of gym psy­cho­log­i­cal endurance. I’m doing essen­tially the same work­out right next to “my bully” and he’s added the weight that I’ve removed. I’d say that’s the essence of our great­est fears, no? How could it have been any more perfect?

Well — as he was work­ing out, on his rests, he’d stand there, bal­ance this two-ton piece of metal on a tiny one-inch bar, and detach the chain (yes, I said chain) from the belt around his waist so he could walk around and rest. I felt bad for him because if that thing fell off the tiny bar it was bal­anced on, it would prob­a­bly fall through the floor into the cen­ter of the earth and get him in a lot of trou­ble — so I offered to step aside and let him use my foot­step as a place to detach from his small piece of black-hole mate­r­ial more safely.

He smiled and said no, it was fine — he was used to doing it there … then made a friendly joke about being care­ful not to drop it on his foot (which would likely have ripped out part of his abdomen, since it was chained to his belt … but that’s another story)… and then we got chatting.

Now, nor­mally, I’d prob­a­bly let me inner cho­rus go off about how much smarter I must be than this guy, that I’m cooler, I was a punk, I might have more money than he does — and did I men­tion that I’m smarter than he is? But I didn’t go there… because well… my body’s got some props now … I can stand next to this guy and even though I’m not that, every­body knows I’m the guy who comes in and has been work­ing out basi­cally on his own moti­va­tion for 6 weeks with noth­ing but an iPhone and a bucket of atti­tude (and my Chuck Tay­lors, which are now a state­ment to the entire gym about how cool I am as I work out)… so I didn’t ignore him as he began to chat — I responded in chat­ting back at him.

As you would expect, I dis­cov­ered that he’s not a bad guy — when I men­tioned that I’m a geek and can’t even do a real pull-up, he talked to me about how “we all have to start some­where” and I said yeah (and noticed that I’m taller than he is), and then he asked me what I do. I told him I own (empha­sis on casual use of the verb own) a data facil­ity in Seat­tle — shrugged and said “we house people’s com­puter gear.” (This is a self-developed way of know­ing I’m bet­ter than him, not just because I own some­thing — but because I’m not men­tion­ing my client list (which is awe­some) … which means I am much more hum­ble than he is, with his pub­lic dis­play of car lift­ing and all). He seemed suf­fi­ciently inter­ested in that for a sec­ond — we chat­ted about my com­ing trip to Europe (because I’m cool and I’m going to Europe, he’s not) — and how my iPhone soft­ware is pretty cool too. He was such a gen­uinely nice guy that I didn’t sneer when he gave me advice about how to use my iPhone in Europe — I didn’t reach out with my eye-mandibles and crush his tiny civil­ian exper­tise … I just smiled and said yeah. It was nice to be nice to this guy, in spite of his resem­blance to my arch-nemesis.

Well — suf­fice to say, we had a nice ses­sion work­ing out around each other — me lift­ing rel­a­tively decent weight, him jug­gling small plan­ets; and then I moved on — frankly not even real­iz­ing at the time that I was inter­nally rec­on­cil­ing with the “bully paradigm.”

After my work­out (in which I skipped an exer­cise because it was stu­pid (writ­ten by bul­lies, no doubt)), I headed to the steam room… and as has hap­pened to me before dur­ing phys­i­cal release like steam rooms and mas­sage — my brain began to sort of “detox” its mem­o­ries too. I started think­ing about Lynn Skelly, the actual bully in my life. What a jerk he was.

My fan­tasy with Lynn usu­ally goes some­thing like this — I head to Europe, where he is a bank­ing exec­u­tive — start an account — then close it because he’s involved — thus get­ting him fired. It’s a pedan­tic fan­tasy, and one I don’t actu­ally exam­ine much any­more … my real hope is that some day I’ll roll up on him and give him a chance to explain him­self — and my dream is that he’ll take respon­si­bil­ity for being a tool and apol­o­gize … but in the mean­time — I just carry that around as a bully vector.

But I’m in the steam room and as I start think­ing about him — I guess because of the dopple­ganger crush­ing air­planes in the weight­room. I think about the fact that, in spite of what­ever sad twist in Lynn’s life that made me his tar­get … I over­came it and moved on, accom­plished things with my life — and he’s just a blip on the radar now (that prick). But most of all, I’d say that, in going through this entire exer­cise thing (which is def­i­nitely more in the world of the bul­lies than the world of “my peo­ple”), I’ve had a chance to rec­on­cile a fit body with a decent personality.

So, I guess, if you have a bully in your life — or a mem­ory of a bully … ask your­self if it’s really worth let­ting that per­son exist in your head any­more … per­haps even find some­one sim­i­lar to that per­son and carry on a con­ver­sa­tion — so you can get over your prej­u­dice … and then move on … it’s a good thing … I enjoyed it … I guess that means it was a good workout.