The Curse Of An Overactive Imagination

Have you ever been walking down to the laundry room or the mailbox or taking out the trash & thought to yourself "If there were zombies coming across the park, what would I do?"

Do you find yourself going into an indepth comparison of the footspeed & stairclimbing abilities of a Romero-esque zombie versus a '28 Days Later' type?

Do you then find yourself figuring out how fast you could get your keys out & unlock the front door?

Do you look to see which neighbor's apartment you could run to for safety or try to determine if the laundryroom door, barricaded with a washer & dryer, could hold back an attack from the undead?

Have you contemplated whether zombies can swim & if jumping into the pool would be effective?

Do you walk up the stairs, front door key at the ready, & quickly close & lock the door behind you when you get inside, panting for breath?

Have you actually thought out a survival plan for a sudden undead uprising, while still having not gotten around to getting an earthquake survival kit together?

C'mon. Please tell me I'm not the only one.

*sigh* I really am weird, aren't I?

Hey, It's A Workout Story That Doesn't Involve Nekkid Old Men!

Ed. Note: It occurred to me that more people might find my stories amusing if I - oh, I dunno - actually posted 'em after writing 'em.

It's just a thought.

I have no proof that my stories are any more or less funny if I post them or not.

The town that I work & go to the gym in is small by comparison to, say, LA or New York. Since The Company is the second largest employer in town, I tend to run into a lot of people from work. Most of the time it's not a bad thing; I recognize them & they haven't the foggiest notion of who I am, which is fine, as I don't make it a habit of running up & greeting them anyway. Sometimes, seeing co-workers (or, in this case, former co-workers) can be a bad thing, though.

Like when I'm at the the gym & I run into Crazy Paulo.

As the name implies, Crazy Paulo's not what I would classify as 'mentally stable'. I mean, I'm not a psychiatrist or anything, but this guy is just a little tetched. He's one of those people who, if you were unfortunate enough to start a conversation with him, would give you not only got a complete rundown of his personal history, but his personal history about three inches from your face. That, in & of itself, doesn't make him crazy, I suppose (more irritating than anything).

No, the thing that tips you off to the fact that he might be a few clowns short of a circus are his eyes. He's got 'crazy eyes', kind of like Brad Pitt in '12 Monkeys', just without the twitchy thing going on. When he talks to you, he looks at you with this intense gaze, & you half expect him to start extolling the virtues of aluminum foil deflector beanies in keeping the gub'ment's mind control rays from getting to you or tell you about how the flying elves with their pointy toes are out to get him. You're afraid to make any sudden movements for fear that he'll freak out on you.

Yeah, that kind of crazy.

So, you can imagine the unmitigated dread that I felt when I entered the gym one night to find Crazy Paulo walking my way. You can probably also imagine how quickly I darted the other way to avoid having him see me. So far, I've managed to avoid his crazy gaze. But, I can see the hamster wheel a'turnin' in his head, knowing that he remembers me from somewhere, perhaps some hallucination he had once. I'm just waiting for the day to come when the lightbulb finally flickers on & he remembers me.

'Tis a day I'm not looking forward to.

So, if I ever go missing for an extended period of time, direct the police to Crazy Paulo. He might just know where to find me.

Oh. My. Word.

It's like someone reached into my mind & pulled out my worst nightmare:

Nudists sweat it out at Dutch gym