A Different Kind of Gym Creep

It's like this, only  not at all like this.  CREDIT.

At my gym, the treadmills conveniently sit right in front of a bank of large windows.  I really like this.  While I could watch the flatscreen that is attached to each machine, I prefer to look out the window.  Mostly this is because I'm usually running at a high enough speed that concentrating at the TV in front of me almost makes me nauseous with all the up and down motion I'm doing.  Window is preferable to potentially throwing up everywhere from motion sickness.

What I don't like so much about the windows is that it invites anyone who walks by to stare at you as you're dripping all sorts of sweat and making the this-fucking-cardio-is-killing-me ugly face.  Even more awkward is that nine out of ten of the people who walk by are either carrying or eating the greasy ass Little Caesar's they conveniently picked up next door.  There is just something mildly disconcerting about being stared at by a person shoving cheesy goodness into their mouth while you're racing uphill yet going no where on a treadmill.  My only consolation is knowing my behind is getting fit at about the rate their's is expanding.  I win.

While my gym lies in close proximity to a Little Caesar's, it is equidistant to a Chinese Buffet.  Yes, I realize the irony in a gym being located near a buffet; I appreciate it daily.  Anyway, this particular buffet is run by an Oriental family that all come to work together in a minivan.  That's how often I'm at the gym.  I know the comings and goings of a buffet running Asian family.  This is really my life.

Well one evening, there I running am on the treadmill.  And on this day I was really fucking running.  In fact, I was alternating between jogging and sprinting at a 15% incline.  I was hating everything at the moment.  Back and forth, back and forth between running and sprinting, I suddenly have that feeling that someone is watching me.  So I look up, fully expecting a regular gym creeper (i.e. an older man with far too short shorts) to be making his way to the door, and instead notice the youngest member of the Chinese Buffet family staring at me through the darkness.  I almost feel off the back of the treadmill.

And he just stood there.  And stared.  It was like I was in some strange, scary movie and having noted that I was fully prepared for him to come crawling swiftly toward the window in a Ring-esque fashion. What. The.  Fuck.

He looked at me and I looked at him in an awkward stare-off.  Finally I flinched, looking down I let the boy have his victory.  And when I looked up again, because how could I not, he was gone.  Which was even freakier than the staring was in the first place.  It was all incredibly strange.

Well played, Asian boy, well played.