Early Morning at Planet Fitness
When your side conversation becomes a lesson in heroism, courage and everyday resilience
If I want examples of heroism, I don’t have to look much farther than those around me at the gym. In so many cases, the people who are sweating it out have pretty interesting stories. Most of us, however, are too busy either ogling ourselves (for better or for worse), especially after a year in lockdown, or comparing ourselves to people we assume either are just plain lucky or have it better than we do.
How little we understand. To that, I will share what happened this morning around 6:35 am.
She was standing next to the cleaning station, which was a big trash can whose lid was repurposed, as were they all, for sprayers and towels. Planet Fitness (PF) has done an admirable job of turning all of its patrons into cleaning fiends; we are admonished to wipe down before and after. Uses a lotta paper but at least the place sparkles.
Lori, as I would discover was her name, was doing upper body with some fairly light dumbbells. Weight, of course, is relative; she’s very slim. Standing at about 5'7", Lori weighs 125. She’s 55. All of which I learned later. First, this is how we met.
