Musclehead Girls and Making Do

Got into it yesterday with a musclehead…girl…at the gym. I’ve crossed paths with her in the past so I knew she was a loner and something of a jerk.

I was using a piece of equipment and she walked up in the middle of my set and informed me that she had been on the way to the same piece of equipment.

Sorry, I’m not a mindreader. If I was I’d have been able to dodge most of the problems I’ve had, especially in relationships…but, that’s another story.

Anyway, I don’t spend most of my workout wondering what her next exercise might be…and I told her that. As you can imagine, it got worse. No yelling, but it was her—forcefully—explaining that I was interrupting the flow of her workout and me explaining that just by coming up and yammering at me she was doing the same to me.

After we parted I got to thinking about it and thought it was stupid so I figured, why not do the right thing. I walked back over and opened with, “You know, it’s ridiculous to have conflicts in the gym and…” That’s as far as I got. She started in again and I responded in kind.

Last night while thinking through the encounter I realized that she was so rigid in what she was doing and thinking she could not be inconvenienced even by a few seconds.  

Unfortunately, I also realized that I’ve had similar attitudes in the gym, in traffic, in the grocery store, taking care of my mom, in relationships and in many other situations.

Life doesn’t owe us anything. It especially doesn’t owe us the phenomenon of things always going exactly the way we want them to.

You know how you always think of the best things to say after the confrontation? Early this morning, in the gray time, I realized I wanted to say, “Get a life!”

Calming down and taking the bumps in stride is just the way to do that.