11:02 p.m. - 2004-06-07
A nearly life-scarring episode
Ronald Reagan died this week. I feel like from the hoopla the media is making over this, I should care a lot more than I do. Oh, wait the media is run by big corporations that want me to care about Ronald Reagon dying at the age of 90-million in a nursing home for filthy-rich people and don't want me to care about 18 year old soldiers who just wanted some free college money who are dying by the dozens or by-standing Iraqi children who are maimed for life by stray bullets and car bombs.
Ok. I know. That's enough.
Today I had a terrifying experience. This, like most of my terrifying experiences is going to sound exaggerated and silly, but I assure you, it happened. So, after my workout, I got my customary cup of water and my baggie of ice, and headed for my hot tub/knee icing ritual. But there was a lady in the hot tub, and due to my limited comfort level of sharing small bodies of water with naked strangers, I headed instead for the steam room. The steam room kind of grosses me out, because its all wet and slimy and hot and it just seems like a breeding ground for bacteria...but it was either a solitary experience with bacteria or an awkward experience with the lady in the hot tub. I went for the germs. As I settled onto the wet tile, making an "ick" face, the whole while thinking how relaxing this is SUPPOSED to be, I thought also about how if someone had sneezed in there earlier, the sneeze germs were probably just hanging in the air, immobilized by the unmoving steam, waiting ot be breathed in my me and morphing into a cold, just in time for my trip to Michigan next week. Gross.
Just then, this LOUD, very sudden, horrible hissing sound errupted and the pipe on the floor started shaking and spewing steam. I was absolutely CERTAIN I was either being gassed by a sinister club employee (those front desk people seem nice but...) or I was about to be steamed to death like broccoli by a serious malfuction in the steaming equipment. My heart was pounding, and I was very quickly deciding if this was truly worth a blood curdling scream and bursting in panic through the doors, possibly injuring myself due to the slippery floor tile. I was mentally very loudly shouting "ohmigosh-ohmigosh-ohmigosh!" and had jumped up and was sort of paralyzed with fear in deciding the whole deilemma of whether I should run out of the steam room screaming, the towel that had once been around me lost in the frantic life-or-death gasping, freakish beeline for non-steamy/poison-gas air.
I had just barely enough sense to recall that I had heard a muffled version of this noise many times before, when lounging in the hot tub a few feet away outside the steamed up glass door...and, at least the first time or two, thought to myself....hmm, it sounds like someone is in there fixing that. Well, the resolution is that I saved myself from what would have been unredeemable embarrasment, and calmed down. I still was a bit shaken up when I came out and obviously had to ACT very casual, going past the lady in the hot tub, faking a pleasant smile her way and thinking to myself....lady, you almost got the show of your lifetime....
