I don’t care how many towels you put down, it’s just not okay for you to straddle a two-foot-wide bench when you’re naked.

Apparently there isn’t anything I can do to stop you pregnant ladies from working out like the rest of us normals, so whatever, I’ve made my peace with the fact that I’m going to see you at the gym. But the next time I see one of you with a kettlebell, I am going to take it away from you.

If you expect people upstairs, in the locker rooms, and outside on the sidewalk to know how you feel about the latest stock market news, you are going to have to huff and sigh just a tiny bit louder.

No one can stop you from working out in what are, without a doubt, the most spectacularly crotchworn gym shorts I have ever seen. I guess I’m kind of surprised that common decency hasn’t caused you to think twice about wearing them on the recumbent bike positioned directly at the top of the stairs, but since it hasn’t, please advise your GP to take a look at your right testicle because I’m pretty sure I see a lump.

Technically, this wasn’t something I thought, but I think the author and I could probably hang.

People are trying to work on their health, so when you’re deciding what channels to put on the TVs by the cardio machines, you need to avoid Paula’s Home Cooking.

Your maid doesn’t work here.

This one actually came very close to being a Thing I Thought At And Then Said To A Person At The Gym. I was on an elliptical machine yesterday when an older lady came up and got on the one beside me. Before she even turned it on, I could tell there was going to be trouble based on the reading material she’d brought for her workout. To be clear: I am 100% in favour of reading on cardio equipment. If I didn’t bring The New Yorker to the gym to read on the elliptical, I would probably never read it at all. But the ledge on the machine was nowhere near deep enough to support the heft of her Vanity Fair. And before she even got to that, she had a section of newspaper to deal with.

I personally never read a section of newspaper unless I have a table or floor to spread it out on, but I have always admired subway newspaper readers who have their folding game down to a science. This lady was not one of those people. First, she tried to rest it on the ledge, but it was too thin and light and kept sliding down. Then she started folding it, but in a haphazard, ineffective way, which she then had to undo and re-fold every time she needed to turn the page. Needless to say, this was noisy and obnoxious and distracted me from my efforts to pretend to understand an article about a biologist studying the human perception of time.

This went on for fifteen minutes or so (that’s not my perception; I’m going by the clock on the machine), and then she moved on to an adjacent treadmill. Not only did she break one gym rule by having her purse out with her on the floor, but she set it down on the treadmill beside her. (A further crime: it was one of those hideous purses made out of a serape or some shit.) On top of that, she brought her magazine with her, but left the section of newspaper wadded up in the handles of her abandoned machine! She left trash on the elliptical! And under my extremely judgmental eyes!

So for about ten minutes, I entertained a detailed fantasy of what I would do if she was still on the treadmill when I finished, and settled on picking up the paper, walking over to the machine beside her (maybe “accidentally” kicking over her purse in the process), and shoving the paper in the drink holder on her treadmill, hissing, “Your maid doesn’t work here,” before flouncing off triumphantly to her sputterings of “Well, I never!” and so on. Sure, she might then look around to the other few people on the floor for support in deeming me an obnoxious jerk (guilty!), but I’d be gone. Plus I’d be right.

And then I thought, what was really bothering me was that she left garbage on the machine, so that the next person who might want to use that particular one due to its position in line with a specific TV, that person might not know if someone were coming back to use it. So I decided that rather than make a big self-righteous scene — though I do enjoy doing that — I would just throw out the newspaper myself, and be the better person. I continued my workout, enjoying the quiet, secret glow of my own awesomeness.

Cut to: me post-workout, halfway home, remembering that, after all that, I had totally forgotten about the newspaper, which was probably still on that elliptical.

AND SCENE.

I know that the men’s locker room and the spa are directly beside each other, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay to walk through the public area from the former to the latter wearing nothing but a towel.

If your spandex pants are so big that your ass looks like a saggy diaper, it’s okay to go down a size, or work out at home, or not work out.

I don’t know who you’re trying to impress, all working out and shit, but you’re pregnant. GO HOME.