[Lou Schuler]

Okay, speaking of trisets, and sharing equipment, and all that:

I've had a gym membership somewhere since 1980, with hardly any breaks. And something happened on Tuesday that had never happened before.

My gym is owned by an orthopedic practice, so it gets lots of seniors and middle-aged beginners who've been sent there to rehab an injury or because they've been told to start working out for the first time.

At any given moment, you can probably see one of them standing in between two benches in front of the DB rack, doing some kind of standing DB exercise. They have no idea they're blocking equipment when they do this. If it's crowded, I sometimes have to ask one of them to stand behind a bench, rather than between two of them, so that I can use the one they're not standing behind.

I probably have this conversation once or twice a month, and it's never a big deal. It hadn't occurred to them that they're blocking equipment, and it's always resolved with a simple, courteous explanation.

Until Tuesday.

I was trisetting three exercises, one of which involved a bench. The other was a standing DB exercise that I was doing a few feet behind that particular bench.

A middle-aged woman walked up, set her clipboard on one bench, then stood between that bench and the other one that was unoccupied right then -- the one I'd been using. Then she started doing a set of DB curls, blocking both benches.

So I said, "Ma'am, I need to use that bench," pointing to the one without the clipboard.

She gave me a look like I'd just farted on her grandchildren. Swear to God, this is what she said: "Why's that?"

I said, "I need to do an exercise on that bench, and I was wondering if you could just step over there so I can use it." I pointed to a spot behind the other bench, which was maybe 3 feet from where she was standing.

"I'm not using the bench!" she said, raising her voice.

"But when you're standing right there, I can't use the bench. If you just stand right there instead ..."

That's as far as the conversation went. She threw her dumbbells at the rack (luckily, they were Barbie weights, so they didn't hurt anything), grabbed her clipboard, stormed over to the trainers' desk, yelled something at them, then stormed out.

She came back a couple minutes later, wearing her coat, yelled at them again, then stormed out again.

Until I told the trainers what had happened, they had no idea what had made this woman so angry. All they knew was that she told them some guy was ordering her around (they were surprised to find out it was me), it was the second time it had happened to her, and she wasn't taking it anymore.

The whole thing was so bizarre and irrational, I was having visions of Kathy Bates in Misery. If I disappear one of these days, you know where to start looking.