Salute Your Shorts

Today, I was subject to a personal milestone of greatness. While fixing breakfast in the kitchen, my shorts fell down to the floor. Whoosh, right to my ankles. Never before have I felt so accomplished.

I guess I should probably back up and explain that since February, I've been trying to lose weight by working out nearly every day at the gym. Mostly via a bastardized form of running on the elliptical machines. But apparently the process of losing weight is extremely slow, so that in my eyes, my day-to-day appearance has remained constant. Only the objectivity of the scale showed that I was making any progress. However, standing in the kitchen with a bowl of Cheerios with my old, wide-waisted pair of shorts having fallen to expose my triumphant bare ass to the refrigerator, I knew that I had come a long way.

Those of you who know me personally know that I am very, very lazy. The campus gym, which is free of charge for us students, is located on the other side of campus from where I work, so about 15 or 20 inconvenient minutes away. My gym, however, is right across the street from my office and costs a considerable amount. The way I see it, it all adds to the motivation. Not only is it closer, but I'm also wasting money every day that I don't go. Through suffering only will I achieve my goals.

Now then, there are two distinct groups of people at the gym. First, there are the testosterone-ridden guys working hard at their weight training, probably daydreaming about drinking a protein shake. Fortunately, as I am trying to focus on losing fat more than building muscle, I spend my time surrounded by the second group - the ridiculously attractive girls who only do cardiovascular exercise. Half are blond, most are already skinny, and all are working out around me. Their bodies are bouncing to the beat of the workout, and the amount of fabric they've donned isn't helping me keep my hormones under control.

What I never understand, though, are the girls who wear the very short shorts with a single word on the back, written across the whole span of the ass. Since it's huge English text, my eyes are naturally drawn to it. With nothing else going on, is there anything else to look at? If anyone were to catch me staring, though, I would really be at a loss for words. After all, it only takes so much time, say a few milliseconds, to read the word "pink." Maybe the whole reason they wear those shorts is the hope of catching me in the act (of looking) and calling me a pervert.

Fortunately, the gym has something that will distract me now - TV monitors on all the elliptical machines. You can watch anything on basic cable while you work out. It's great to know where my gym membership fees are going. Of course, within the first month of their installation, there were problems with certain monitors. Now there are the three or so that you would rather avoid if possible, because they've screwed you in the past and they might screw you again. Of course, if you're unfortunate and there's no way to watch TV, there's always the mp3 player or, my personal favorite, the aforementioned butt of the girl in front of me.

Man, I hope she's working out to lose weight. She's not really fat at all, but what I wouldn't give for her shorts to fall down right about now... Come on, join me in victory!