Dear "Fitness" Gym,

I abhor you.

You make me feel like a purple headed alien with five tongues and three breasts.

I've never done a whole lotta time in any gym (in case that wasn't obvious already), and when I have, I've always felt that I was some weird de-flowered little hippy chick trying to make her way through the city of the buff and the beautiful.

Tonight, realizing I lacked any sort of real exercise in my life and that this was not conducive to having a swimsuit model body (with abs and an ass your could bounce quarters off of) this summer, I went to the gym.

There was about three other people in the gym (one of them the friend I went with) and I.swear.to. god they were staring at me, waiting for the spectacle that would be me mating with one of those machines.

For comfort and safety sake, I tried the fancy elliptical machine first. I (sort of) have one at home (it's broken at one speed and is currently sitting in my back yard). I figured I would, at least, be one with this machine - however, the big difference was, its buttons worked. I was supposed to hit some numbers...? and maybe the "ok" button? But, to be honest, I panicked and just hit random buttons, and then I started 'walking,' but it was quickly like running... and I couldn't really keep up with the machine. Tension? Where was the tension to make this thing slower? Like a rabbit on speed, I tried to keep up.

"How do I slow this thing down?" I asked my friend beside me. "It's, like, running away from me..."

She looked over at me a little perplexed and said, "Umm, just slow down?"

Like, with my body did she mean? But, it was like a bike in first gear going down hill. My limbs flailed to keep up and body barely followed. Slow down?

I tried to make it look like I knew what I was doing, I tried to play it cool....

After a time, I said "Whew, that's probably good for now, I gotta go snowboarding tomorrow, I don't wanna over do it. How long was that do you think?"

She looked over, "Four Minutes?"

Oh, good then.