Thursday, May 16, 2019

I really can't go back to this gym again. For real this time.

You guys.

There's a gym right next to my office so most days I take some time in the afternoon to go workout and get all swole and gainzzz and stuff. A lot of the people I work with do the same so it's sort of like a sweaty office party every afternoon, but with lots of other offices as well.

So today I walked over to the gym at my usual time. It was full of everyone I know. I changed into my gym clothes. I was wearing bike shorts and a t-shirt that used to fit me back when I was young and cute and desirable.

The workout I did was one I do often. I bike a little and run a little and lift weights a little and not always in that order. I don't have any science or results to validate this as an effective routine. It's just a thing I do until I get tired because I don't care enough about exercise to actually look up a training program and follow it.

If you follow my program, you can look like *this*, too! [sucks in stomach and feels bad about self]

So there I was, minding my business, listening to a podcast about TV because it is no longer enough for me to just watch TV, I now have to spend time listening to people talk about watching TV. I biked a little. I ran on the treadmill a little. I lifted weights a little. Not necessarily in that order.

I was in the middle of some nonsensical weight-lifting routine when suddenly I felt someone tap my shoulder.

It was a man I don't know, but whom I see frequently at the gym. I pulled one earphone out, curious as to what he could possibly want.

"You probably don't care, and I'm sure other people have told you this by now," he started.

I braced myself for that sentence to end with "but you look exactly like Zac Efron/you have the most beautiful singing voice I've ever heard/I loved you in Thunder Down Under."

But no.

"there's a huge hole in the middle of your butt."

Ok, look. I don't know why my mind immediately went there. I don't know what on Earth caused me to assume this. But for some reason, I thought this man had approached me just to make a very strange and obvious observation/joke about human anatomy so I responded to "there's a huge hole in the middle of your butt" by shouting, "I SURE HOPE SO!"

The man. This nearly complete stranger. He just stared at me for a few seconds, puzzled, said "ok," and then went back to what he was doing.

It took me a full 30 seconds to realize that he was trying to tell me that there was a huge hole in the back of my bike shorts that I had been parading around in for the better part of an hour at my sweaty office party.

A panic suddenly rushed through me. I quickly walked into the locker room and pulled my juicy booty in front a mirror, where I saw this:


That's obviously not my actual butt. If it was, we would have much more serious problems to talk about than the hole. I put my shorts on a watermelon to demonstrate what it looked like because this is a family show and I don't want to get kicked off the internet.


And actually since the hole was pretty much in the middle of my butt, it looked more like this:


That's supposed to be a drawing of my butt but now that I'm looking at that picture I can see that it just looks like a watermelon with a line drawn on it.

Here. Maybe this is better:


The point is I was absolutely not wearing underwear because underwear is a scam created by China to get us to buy more clothes than we need.

Ok, I do normally wear underwear, but not under my bike shorts. So sue me.

I'm now realizing that maybe I should have waited until pumpkin season for the above demonstration. But here we are.

Also, bless his heart, when I asked Skylar to go to the grocery store to pick up a watermelon for me he didn't ask why I needed one, nor did he ask any questions when he walked into the kitchen an hour ago and saw that I had drawn a line and written "Butt" on it.

Anyway, as I stood in the locker room and stared at my voluptuous bottom poking through my raggedy bike shorts, all I could think about was what on Earth about me would make this man think I wouldn't care about this information.

He had started the whole thing off by saying "You probably don't care but . . ."

Do I look like the kind of person who would flaunt butt cleavage at the gym? Like some militant nudist just daring someone to say something?

Sometimes you think you're hot stuff, biking a little, running a little, and lifting weights a little. And then you find out everyone has been looking at your watermelon butt.

~It Just Gets Stranger

34 comments:

  1. WORTH THE WAIT and it isn’t even Friday yet. You are so good to us. Though it REALLY would have been better if you had thought of the pumpkin earlier.

    LYLAS-
    Your lazy top fan, the one who smells like a rose by any other name, even anonymous.

    Also, while we’re on the topic, one of the reasons it was so funny to me when you said that about my sister needing to hire a writing consultant (I know what you meant to write) is that she IS a writing consultant. Like, that really is her job. I mean, maybe not the title, but it’s what she does for people.

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  2. Like I REALLY need you to put these on over some underwear and show us where exactly this hole was and how big it actually is. PLEASE.

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  3. Stop. I can't. This is the funniest post ever. Or maybe it's late. But I have real tears streaming down my face cheeks (had to clarify which cheeks here) and they are not from the last Big Bang Theory... I'm never going to sleep now.

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  4. Really, truly laughing out loud in my classroom. Thankfully, it is still godawfulo'clock and there are no students or other teachers around.

    Thank you, Watermelon Butt. Thank you.

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  5. At first I thought the watermelon was your underwear and I thought "well, that's not so bad, the style of the underwear makes it seem like it was kinda intentional - like it was a 'look'". . . .but then you mentioned that you weren't wearing any underwear and I realized that you're a bad role model for my almost-13-year-old-son who regularly doesn't wear underwear and whom I have to make prove to me that he is before I let him go to school every morning oh my heavens this is a really LONG run-on sentence!

    But seriously - thanks for this - I've had an awful week and I needed to laugh.

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  6. So . . . NSFW but your story made me think of this song that my four year old loves a little too much: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiSmmhaPb6E

    (The song lyrics are fine, but the music video is a little adult.)

    I really thought you had like tie dye patterned underwear or something before you told us it was a watermelon.

    Eli, I hang my head in shame with you. WHO WOULDN'T WANT TO KNOW THEY WERE SHOWING OFF THEIR CHEEKS?! Seriously though. And WHY phrase it like that?? "You have a hole in your butt?" Of course. WE ALL DO. Why not "your shorts are ripped, and we can see your cheeks??" Sigh. At least he told you though. I wonder how many people DIDN'T do their public service to humanity???

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  7. That was the first time I snort laughed in a while, thank you.

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  8. Literal tears rolling down my face. Had to wait *several* minutes to catch my breath enough to even scroll through the comments to tell you how awesome this is. Then I read Stopher and Nicolle'S comment about "face cheeks" and had to wait another several minutes.

    "You probably don't care" but thank you a million times over for this laugh!

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  9. NO judgment at all, but serious question - how in the heck did you not feel air on your bum? I've always wondered that - like if my a$% or crack was hanging out wouldn't I feel air on it and know something was seriously wrong? I'm glad I'm the only one in the office right now- I almost peed my pants cauase I was laughing so hard at this!

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  10. Eli. This is one of the funniest thing I have ever read in my life. I am crying!

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  11. Oh God no. Nooo. Eli, you can never go back. You need to get a new job in a new city and also a new workout wardrobe. In that order. I'm so sorry. He assumed that everyone had already told you and you didn't care. And you yelled to confirm it. Please continue to blog in your new witness protection life.

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  12. Definitely top 3 story, biking around town in your underwear, stealing a strangers car, and this one. Since my corporate offices are located in the same building as your office, I've heard 'personal opinions' of your gym from coworkers, so I legit understand why he thought maybe you didn't care that you were mooning the room. Take comfort in that you were in a room of people who aren't phased by your holy shorts. :)

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  13. I should NOT read this blog at work. Literally sitting in a courtroom, during a trial, and doing this weird laughing/coughing/crying thing. I needed this story this week! So sorry about your watermelon butt.

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  14. Replies
    1. WELL OBVIOUSLY THE BEEHIVE: HIVE MIND!

      But also, I've been *consuming* I Hate it but I Love it

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  15. 😂😂😂🤣 Could you not feel a draft? A little more airflow or cooler than normal? Everyone else was just like oh that’s just Eli with his butt out again. It happens. 😂😂

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    1. This was also my immediate thought! That is a LARGE hole; how did he not feel that something was a little different than normal?

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  16. I CANNOT stop laughing right now! This is seriously the BEST blog post on the face of this planet (and I'm an expert cause I'm a blogger, duh)!

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  17. I think it is time you enter the witness relocation program. That is your only hope of regaining a somewhat normal gym life after this.

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  18. This is TOO funny!!! Can’t stop laughing.

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  19. Ahahahahaha omg I love this so much. I can't stop laughing even though I am supposed to walk into a meeting. I actually think my favorite part is the watermelon demonstration and the watermelon butt. I didn't know I needed to see a butt drawn on a watermelon, but it turns out it was ALL I needed today!

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  20. I was reading through it and thinking, "OH GODS, I hope he's not going to tell us he wasn't wearing underwear!!!" And then there it was. >.<

    Yeah, you can't ever go back there, man. Or, give it a year until the clientele flushes (pun COMPLETELY intended) out and maybe there will only be 2 or 3 people that witnessed it left, *if* they remember it, and you can all laugh about it together if they were to bring it up to you in a casual convo over the water fountain.

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  21. I make my husband read or listen to me read Stranger sometimes, and THIS ONE FINALLY got him to laugh. So, you succeeded in something today!!

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    1. Yep! Same with the Stopher... -Nicolle

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    2. This is what finally got my husband to read Stranger. Then I sent him down the EMBARRASSING tag and he loved it.

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  22. Serious question, is this one of those places you've been accidentally nude before? If it is then don't even worry about this, you were overdressed, people should be happy that hole was in the back of your pants! Hold your head high and accept your place as the sometimes naked guy at the gym.

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  23. This just passed up the time you accidentally stole a car as my second favorite Strangerville story ever. (My all time favorite is From Tinder to Temple)

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  24. As soon as I read “you have a hole in your butt” I also thought well duh. And then the laughter came. I don’t know if it’s the end of year tiredness (I’m a middle school teacher) or what but I started laughing so hard I couldn’t finish reading the post for like 10 minutes. I had tears streaming down my face cheeks (thank you Stopher and Nicolle, I’m never calling them anything else now) and It was the silent wheezy kind. My husband said I sounded like a wounded walrus and then saw my tears and asked if I was crying or laughing. THANK YOU, THANK YOU, from the bottom of my tired teacher heart for bringing this joy into my life

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  25. "You probably don't care but..." Oh my gosh! Can't stop laughing! You definitely cannot go back to that gym!

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  26. Regardless of why the guy thought you probably wouldn’t care, he now KNOWS you don’t care because you told him “I SURE HOPE SO!”

    Never change, Eli.

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  27. And....you couldn't feel a breeze?!

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