Favorite Person At The Gym: The Bouffant

According to the most respected source on the internet besides my mother, a bouffant "is a type of hairstyle characterized by hair piled high on the head and hanging down on the sides" but it says nothing about how to maintain this look while working out at the gym.

On the days that I make it to the gym around lunch time, I usually see a woman, the Bouffant, working out on an elliptical machine. What is the proper verb for working out on an elliptical machine anyways? You run on a treadmill, ride or bike on a stationary bike, do you ellipt on an elliptical? Or maybe you gallop?  Anyways, the Bouffant has the most perfect, blond helmet of hair held together by countless bobby pins and at least one bottle of hairspray. Not to mention that she is incredibly tiny and fit. She can't be more than five feet tall, 90 pounds and could be anywhere from 25 to 65 years old, depending on her tanning tenancies and taste for nicotine and booze.

As I run on the treadmill trying not to do a face plant, she elegantly gallops on the elliptical machine in front of me for at least an hour, never breaking a sweat nor moving a single hair out of place. Being a heavy sweater myself, I wondered how she does it? Does she drink liquid antiperspirant to block her sweat glands?  That is bound to give her some sort of cancerous growth someday. Her hair never moves nor does she even have a beat of sweat across her brow. Her hair is like it's own separate entity, a snap-on Lego hairstyle that stays in place as she moves her lower half around and around on the machine. Does she use multiple bottles of hairspray every day or piles of gel to keep it all in place? If I even look at someone else sweating, my straightened against its will hair will hear the humidity and immediately frizz up, creating a halo of curls that remind me of the days between Kindergarten and 9th grade when I rarely brushed my naturally wavy hair.

As I wipe another river of sweat off my brow, I wonder what the Bouffant does for a living and start to create my own version of what must be her reality. She is clearly an executive assistant to a very well off business man, possibly an oil tycoon. I bet she even does personal assistant work for the tycoon's family, calling the wife to remind her about the dinner with clients coming up that week, scheduling baby sitters for their 2.5 kids and making sure the dry cleaning gets picked up. She doesn't do it all herself, she arranges it and is paid very well her for years of service. She wears teal suits with skirts, not pants, and gets her acrylic nails done every week at the same time and place she's been going to for the past 5 or 35 years, depending on her age. She's been wearing the same style of makeup and hair for her entire life. She might have even got her start working with Mary Kay. Maybe she sold the oil tycoon's wife some lipstick and they became fast friends. When the executive assistant position opened up at her husband's office, the wife recommended the Bouffant for the job and the rest is history. Even though she is single, she's never crossed any lines with her married boss, no way, she's not that type. She takes her job as seriously as her hair and would never do anything to compromise either one. She works out on her lunch hour no matter what, and probably eats the same 300 calorie Lean Cuisine meal and drinks Crystal Light raspberry lemonade every day for lunch. She is meticulous and organized in her own life, no one with hair that perfect could be disorganized or sloppy when it comes to calorie counting. She drives a nice beige sedan with tan leather interior, possibly bought for her by her tycoon boss as a Christmas bonus for a job well done. She lives alone in a town home in a nice part of town. It's filled with dust-free fake flowers on side tables that are covered with wrinkle-free table clothes and doilies. The place is immaculate, even the flowery pillows on the couch somehow fluff themselves back into perfect place when she gets up to refill her Crystal Light. 

I get so wrapped up in imagining the Bouffant's life, I don't even notice when she actually finishes her workout and leaves. I want to run out into the parking lot to find her and confirm she is getting into her beige sedan wearing a teal suit to head back to the tycoon's office, where she will microwave her frozen lunch before she goes back to work opening mail, scheduling meetings and making sure every last detail in his life, and then her's, is in place. 

Favorite Person At The Gym: The Snorkeler

I am supposed to swim at least two times a week, according to my triathlon training schedule. I am lucky if I get in one session in the pool a week. Making the trek to the indoor pool at the gym in Austin is not always the top of my priority list since all the other swimmers in town also think they are too good to swim outdoors when it is 30 degrees outside. These other swimmers include The Snorkeler.

Before she was The Snorkeler, the person I am referring to is a nice, older woman who asked to circle swim in my lane (Circle swim is where you go up on one side of the lane and come back on the other so you can fit more than two people in a lane.) Circle swimming works well when everyone is more or less at the same pace, so no one has to constantly pass each other or wait for the slowest swimmer (me) to finish.

Because I am apparently judgmental, I assume she will be slow based on her apparent age and fitness level and therefore right up my alley (or lane), so I said yes. Little do I know that she had a snorkel and mask in her bag that transformed her into a swimming super villain, known as The Snorkeler, who will chase me down no matter how fast or slow I dog paddle up and down the lane. If I wait for her to go ahead of me and start immediately after her, by the time I reach the end of the lane she is somehow behind me again, slapping the water at my feet never looking up to see that someone might be in her way, or maybe she just didn't care. I would tell her to go ahead, except the mask allowed her to never lift her head, nor stop because she could actually now breath underwater. Unlike the rest of us who have to turn our heads to the side every stroke or so to gulp in enough air to keep going another few yards.

Frankly, I think using the snorkel while swimming laps is cheating. It's like having a motor on your bicycle or those fancy shoes with wheels embedded in the heels that are so popular with the tweens.  Don't get me wrong, I love to snorkel and have my very own mask, breathing apparatus and flippers that I use in the ocean and rivers so see all the pretty fish and cool marine life. They are for leisurely activities, not workouts at the gym. The Snorkeler didn't have flippers on, but I didn't check the size of her feet to see if they counted (mine are totally flippers, by the way). The snorkel meant she never had to break that nice forward momentum to turn her head and was taking in more oxygen than those of us who had to hold our breath while our faces were in the water. Cheater. Next time I see her in the pool, I'm totally going to do a cannon ball and splash all of her stuff, then promptly get out and sit in the sauna until she is done.

Favorite Person At The Gym: The Grunter

You can hear him from every corner at the gym. I tried to type out what a grunt sounds like, but nothing really does it justice and it just looks funny.

AAARRRRG! No, that's not it.

UUUUUUUHHHHHHHGGGGG! Closer, but still not quite there. 

You know what I'm talking about. The loud, guttural, almost animal like sound usually followed by the clatter of many weights falling to the ground. This particular grunter however, was not lifting heavy weights. He was doing lunges. Just regular, old, lunge back and forth across the gym exercises holding some average sized weights. Again, this is more than I can manage as I am barely able to lunge deep enough for my back knee to touch the ground before I lose my balance and fall over. Sometimes one of my gluteus maximus muscles (that is the butt for you non science types) cramps and I stand awkwardly in the middle of the gym trying to massage it inconspicuously. I applauded the grunter for his balancing act but was the grunting really necessary? Turns out it was necessary for EVERY exercise he did that day, as the grunting did not cease when he finished his lunges. He better watch out, when I did a failed search for a "grunting" sound effect I came across this article about a weightlifter who was thrown out of a gym for grunting back in 2006.