Classy
I’m particular about my gym wear. To illustrate, my socks must be white or a shade approximating my skin tone. I call the shade “nude.” Crayola misguidedly called it “flesh.”
After a torturous day’s work, I reached the Y desperately in need of a stress-defusing workout. Too bad I’d forgotten to bring allowably-colored socks. I hadn’t time to run home to fetch them. I also knew, if I showed up at home, I’d be held captive there. I checked the car trunk and backseat. No socks. I contemplated dumpster-diving into the pool deck’s lost and found bin, teeming with abandoned bathing suits, towels, plastic dinosaurs, socks from one-footed people, and what have you. Faced with the prospect of diving into that gloppy, ammonia-stinking, intertwisted morass, I decided I’d sooner stand in rush-hour traffic in an ice storm holding a sign like the homeless people carry, but mine would say, “Need socks.” I bit the bullet and wore the only socks I had: dark blue.
The locker room deposited me into a room crammed with seasoned weight machines decorated by red pleather upholstery. I hoped nobody would observe my sock irregularity. Before I started working out, a 17-year-old girl engaged in reverse lumbar curls made it patently obvious she was looking over her left shoulder at my dark blue socks. She seemed to laugh and then flashed a smile. I figured she laughed because I looked like a nerd. Wearing dark blue socks to the Y is as nerdy as slipping those old plastic ink stain protectors on a shirt pocket. It didn’t matter she was only 17. That’s plenty old enough to make me feel mortified.
I exited the weight room and walked fast to the far end of the Y. I didn’t talk with or even look at anyone to avoid attracting undue attention. I finally reached safety. On the balcony overlooking the indoor pool, I’d be alone in the embrace of hothouse humidity punctuated by muffled, indecipherable pool yells. In peace, I could ride a recumbent bike there, eyes shut, with nobody to observe my dark blue socks.
A few shameless minutes into my bike ride, the same 17-year-old showed up, prostrated herself on the mat in front of my bike, and began a stretching routine: hamstrings, calves, quads, hip flexors. It looked like she was planning to stretch everything. I wasn’t staring. She’d planted herself directly in my line of sight. It was only then I noticed she was wearing dark blue socks just like mine.
“I thought you were laughing at my blue socks, but you’re wearing them too!” I said.
Mid hurdler’s stretch, she looked up, opened her brown eyes wide, smiled knowingly, and confidently pronounced, “They’re classy.”
She resumed stretching. When done, with legs crossed, she took a few slow, deep, yogic breaths. She then stood, gave me the familiar smile of an old friend, and opened the balcony’s exit door.
I kept on riding in my classy dark blue socks.
