A Limerick at the Gym

I go to a city-run gym on a regular basis to keep the middle-age gut in check, or at least I try to. The gym is a spare setup, a few weight machines and a bunch of treadmills and steppers situated in one gray painted room. The gym is frequented by people who are trying to recapture some semblance of their lost youth.  It’s not one of those chain clubs that have everything from aerobics to saunas, but it’s cheap and convenient.  The place feels impersonal though, and the people sweating on the machines rarely speak to each other.  A smile here and a grunt there is the nearly all the communication there is.  About half the people wear miniature MP3 players, effectively saying they are incommunicado.

An open doorway off the gym room leads to a small alcove that contains stretching mats, jump ropes, those big rubber ball things, and a chalkboard. I think the chalkboard might be there because several local schools use the gym facilities for sports training.  I haven’t yet figured out why it’s stored there, but there it sits. The whole time I’ve been coming here, the chalkboard has sat there with the same faint markings that might be an old football play.  Other than that it sits there clean and unmarked.  It mocks me.

Mocks me?  Oh yeah, because I find it hard to resist chalkboards.  They call out to me to be written on, even when I have no business writing on them.  Once way back in college I got to class 20 minutes early, and by the time the other students started to file in I had drawn a huge mural on the 20 foot wide chalk board, showing a guy receiving a pizza delivery on a desert island.  The professor liked it so much he wrote his class notes around it for the entire hour.  I was embarrassed and elated all at the same time.

So there sits the chalkboard in my city gym, mocking me, calling to me (write on me).  Hardly anyone ever comes into the alcove anyway.  Who’s going to know it was me.  There’s just a scrap of chalk, but it’s enough to, to, … to do what?

Let’s start simple, I think.  Looking around to be sure I’m alone, I pick up the chalk and write the first line of a limerick on the board:

Upon this weight machine I do toil

A week goes by and my limerick one-liner stands by itself on the blackboard.  I am beginning to think that I’m the only one who comes in here.  The second week comes and goes uneventfully, and my one liner seems to be fading on the board.  But on Tuesday of the third week I go into the alcove to stretch, and a second line has magically appeared in an elegant hand:

Upon this weight machine I do toil

My flabby jowls they sway and roll

I stare at the second line in disbelief; the chalkboard and my limerick line have captured someone else.  With a big smile on my face I grab the chalk, look over my shoulder (yeah, I’m alone), and consider what to put for the third line.  Looking down I find inspiration:

Upon this weight machine I do toil

My flabby jowls they sway and roll

My chest is concave

Not an easy one to rhyme because of its double syllable ending, but I go for broke and throw up a challenge to my unknown collaborator.  I’m coming to the gym more often now, as I can’t wait to see the next line.  The next line is a whole three weeks in coming, and it’s in a different blocky handwriting:

Upon this weight machine I do toil

My flabby jowls they sway and roll

My chest is concave

And my butt won’t behave

I throw my head back and bray with laughter.  I hear the weight machines and treadmills in the adjacent gym room briefly pause, then resume their grinding.  A few heads turn to look at me as I leave the alcove.  Some of them smile knowingly at me, and I wonder if they know I’m the phantom limerick writer.  I haven’t filled in the last line because I’m hoping someone else will make my day again sometime soon.  And I haven’t long to wait.  Two days later when I go back to the gym, my limerick stands complete with three possible concluding lines:

Upon this weight machine I do toil

My flabby jowls they sway and roll

My chest is concave

And my butt won’t behave

But at least I’ve got some self control √√√

My body’s the definition of birth control  √√√√√

This is nothing but damage control √√√√√√√√√√√

Someone has written at the bottom of the chalkboard “Vote for your favorite last line”.  Check marks accumulate over the next few weeks, until it’s clear that “damage control” is the clear winner.  Funny, this place doesn’t seem nearly as impersonal as it once did.  People smile and say hello, and sometimes even exchange muted conversation.  Finally I pick up the chalk and write:

If you contributed to, voted for, or liked this limerick, let’s all get together at the Gatsby pub on the corner of Aurora Ave.  and 175th at 8:00PM on Saturday, May 5th.

We had quite a turnout.

Word count: 892