Since I am no longer gainfully employed, I have been going to the gym more. It serves the purpose of working off the Taco Bell I consume on a regular basis and it also serves the purpose of punishing me for not having a job.
A key part to the time I spend in the gym is doing cardio. Many people run around town for free, but I've paid for a three year membership so I can have lower impact exercise in front of televisions.
And it was the television directly in front of me that is the catalyst for this blog entry.
There are about a dozen TVs scattered about the cardio area of my local 24 Hour Fitness Express, and about four of them were visible from where I was exercising. Evidently there are things called "remote controls" that allow for the channels to be changed, but I am not one to rock the boat, so even if I'm the only one who can see a TV, I leave it on the channel it's on.
Sometimes it works out well, if one of the ESPN family of networks is on. I can live with E! and CNN and most of the regular ones (for some reason, one of my favorites (History International) does not appear very often).
But today? Today I found one that does NOT work for me. That channel? Animal Planet.
I like animals. I like pets. I like pets and animals too much to watch Animal Planet, especially when I'm sweating in public.
I caught the end of one show about veterinarians learn on the job. "Whatever," I thought as I kicked off my cardio workout, "it might be interesting, and in any case since yesterday was their holiday I might as well celebrate Veterinarian Day with them by watching this."
Well, seven minutes later there was a gibbon with a badly broken arm that was going under the knife. Even under the best of circumstances, I am not a big fan of monkey innards, and when I was just breaking a sweat it was no less appealing. By the time the other case study, involving a cute puppy that needed some sort of surgery for eye trauma, I was feeling a bit queasy but I didn't want to interrupt my workout so I averted my eyes and crossed my fingers (not literally; they were grasping the elliptical machine in ever-growing weariness) that the next show would be better.
It wasn't.
Now, I know dogs are loyal. And I know that some people treat dogs like horseshit. What I don't need to see, as I gazed around, wistfully looking for a cute butt to stare at for the remainder of my cardio time, is for a dog to be super-loyal after being treated like horseshit.
Animal Planet clearly disagreed.
In "San Francisco Animal Cops" or some such, there was a case of a dude keeping a little dog named Sexy outside on a SHORT chain (not even a collar) with an open dog house and feeding him scraps for his entire life. Sexy's life. Not the owner's.
Never had taken the dog for a walk. Never had let the dog inside.
When the Animal Cop took possession of the pooch, he had to cut the chain off from around the dog's neck. And Sexy made a bee-line for the owner that had neglected him so thoroughly and for so long.
Maybe it's that time of the month for me, or maybe it was the sweat getting into my eyes, but I felt like crying, it was so sad.
Crying in the middle of a 24 Hour Fitness is no bueno, though, so I bit my lip and cursed Animal Planet for making my cardio so emotionally difficult as well as physically taxing.
No comments:
Post a Comment