The Old Man and The Gym

Going to the gym would not
solve his problems.  But it was
a place to start

He was an old man who lived off Ashford-Dunwoody road and he had gone eighty-four days without going to the gym.  In the first forty days a boy had asked to go with him.  But after forty days, the boy's parents said the old man was definitely salaoa which doesn't even make sense but they had been drinking and probably meant the old man was unlucky or just lazy or else they were asking, what's an old man want to hang around with a boy anyway?  Is he a pervert?  It made the boy sad to see the old man come home in his Camry each day without going to the gym.  The Camry was silver but the windshield was blotchy because the old man never cleaned it.  The old man was a slob.

The old man had a bald head and a round tummy.  As his sides were two lumps of fat that the women call love handles although there is no woman who loves to handle them.  His glasses were smeary.  His shoe laces were frequently untied.  Going to the gym would not solve his problems.  But it was a place to start.

"Today will be a lucky day," the old man told the boy.  "It is a lucky day to go to the gym."

"Yes," agreed the boy.  "You will go to the gym today.  You will be ripped."

"I do not wish to be ripped," the old man said.  "I am too old for that.  I wish only not to look so much like the Pillsbury Doughboy."  The boy said nothing.  Compared to the old man, the Pillsbury Doughboy was buff.

The grass under their feet was green with brown splotches.  The sky was overhead.  That is a good place for the sky, the old man thought.  There were exactly three clouds.  No, make that two.  No three.  There were two or three clouds.

"Today," said the old man, "I will go to the gym."

"I believe you," the boy said.  The boy did not believe him for a second.