Peter McKay

Last week, my daughter and I went together to the gym on the day after New Year's Day. It was a mistake — the place was chock full of folks who made New Year's resolutions.

Don't get me wrong. I am not, as my wife can tell you, a) an exercise nut, b) in any kind of shape or c) generally all that aware of my fellow man. I go to the gym on a regular basis, do a minimal workout, and then sit in the sauna, get a shower and go home. I'm not trying to get in shape or look good, I'm just trying to not die any time soon. (If you go to the gym and regularly see a middle-aged man who shuffles from machine to machine, looking like a slightly flabby and somewhat bored zombie, you should walk over and say hi. It's probably me.)

The gym is already full of people who get on my nerves. First, there are the guys who lift huge amounts of weight, and in between sets strut around and look at themselves in the mirrors while they hold their arms out at weird angles as if they can't put them down at their sides. (The mirrors are just there for those guys. The rest of us do not want to see ourselves in pain.) There are a fair number of grunters, too. The people who punctuate each and every lift with a deep hoarse "Huhhhh!" and drop the weights on the ground just to make sure you know how strong they are. (If they were actually strong, they would lift the weights quietly and easily. That's also why the rest of us are wearing headphones. It's not that we love our music that much, it's that we don't want to hear the grunters.) Then there are people who sweat way, way too much. (If you notice that the exercise machine is dripping wet after you get off it and the person waiting to use it looks like they just swallowed something that didn't agree with them, you're probably one of these people. The rest of us would like to chip in and buy you a home gym.)

For most of the year, all of us regulars, the preeners, the grunters, the sweaters and the middle-aged folks who are just hoping to live long enough to meet their grandchildren, get along.

But for a few days at the beginning of each year, the gym is full of slightly and temporarily determined folks who have decided, after a New Year's Eve of too much champagne, that this is the year they're going to finally change their lives. Suddenly, you have to edge through crowds like you're at a party and if you get time on a machine, there are two people standing right behind you, waiting for you to finish up.

Of course, if you turn on your TV this time of year, most of the ads will be for gym memberships. That's because the gyms know that you'll sign up so you can make good on your New Year's resolution and then slowly, but surely, will lose your resolve and stop coming. That's the way it works. You don't actually quit the gym, you just get too "busy" to go and make excuse after excuse until suddenly months have gone by, you can't find your membership card and you'd rather not think about it. Nothing happens until sometime in June, when your significant other looks at the credit card bill and angrily demands to know why you never cancelled that membership.

We all know that in a few weeks, a month tops, they'll be gone, and their resolutions, which only last through January but are paid for through June, will subsidize my membership all year long. Until they drift away, though, I trudge around the gym, silently giving "sell by" dates to the resolute ones. The lady sitting at the bench press machine talking on her cell phone? Three days. The guy in jeans and mall walkers, scratching his head and reading the little sticker on the side of the curl machine to find out what muscle he's building up? A week and a half. The young woman sitting on an exercise ball, bouncing on it like it's a Hoppity Hop? Today's probably her last day.

That guy over in the free weight section, grunting and preening and leaving a dribbly trail of sweat drops wherever he goes? He's here till next New Year's. And the sad looking droopy guy shuffling along trying not to look at anybody? He'll be here till he gets grandkids.

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