Observations From The Locker Room Floor

Dear Jenny,

Summer anyone...?

 

I know, you must be thinking “What? Locker room floor? What is she doing now?”  Yeah, well, why not?  Why wouldn’t you want to get down and spend some time on the locker room floor?!! I must say, it wasn’t my first choice, but it worked..

Yesterday, was my youngest’s, first go around in the “hour care” at the YMCA while I worked out.  As you can imagine, the one year old, wasn’t too excited with the whole prospect of leaving my side for just a short amount of time.  He was fine when I left him, but then I think the down fall was when the babysitter picked him up and he got a glimpse of me on the treadmill.  That’s when it all came crashing down.  I stuck it out for 15 minutes, and then I couldn’t do it any longer.  You know, a work out just becomes so stressful when you are looking over and seeing your baby cry.  The baby sitter was good, she gave me the motions to just keep going, not a big deal–which at first was fine .  But I could only take it for so long, and finally I pulled the plug.

So I went in and got him, and trying to save some part of my workout (the over achiever in me) I decided that I could at least do my sit ups and leg lifts while Sam was with me.  However, where am I going to do that, where my one year old, standing right by my side isn’t considered too much of a liability around all of the machines?  You guessed it, the locker room floor…I’m not too proud

The world looks a lot different when you are on the floor of a locker room.  First of all, you feel small.  Second of all, you feel a little like a voyeur, because you can peak under the stalls, and third, you are a little cold–those tile floors are not meant to lay on.  For the whole 10 minutes that I was down there though, I did have a chance to observe…and this is what I noticed.

The women would file in and smile at me, I’d make a funny comment about my situation and they would go about their business to wash their hands and look in the mirror.  When they looked in the mirror it was an immediate scowl and something was always mumbled under their breath about their appearance.  One woman mentioned that she couldn’t wait for summer when her nose wouldn’t look so red, another lady commented that she had so far to go, as she focused in on her mid section. I actually commented to her that she looked great–and she did.  She smiled and acted a little surprised that this 36-year-old psycho, who was on the floor of the locker room with her one year old, doing situps would actually take the time to say something nice to her in between repetitions.  Well, she did, she looked good, and she needed to hear it.  There was another woman who came in next and kept looking at her forehead–wrinkles maybe?  I couldn’t see them from my view, but that is all I could surmise.  She definitely was not happy, whatever it was she was looking at.  And away she went…

Hmm, are you seeing a pattern here Jenny?  The operative phrase being my view.  I think that we are too hard on ourselves.  From my view, I didn’t see any of these flaws. Why is it that we always tear ourselves down and look at the worst possible attribute that we “think” that is ours alone?   Do we realize that most of the world doesn’t look that closely at how red our nose is, or how many wrinkles that we have on our forehead?  I know that I don’t.  Usually I notice someone’s nice demeanor, warm smile, or their cool hairdo.  I’ll think, yeah, that’s what I want.  Wouldn’t it be nice to walk away from the mirror with a smile on your face instead of a scowl? 

Remember, it starts with love of self.   When was the last time you looked in the mirror and said, “Damn, girl, you look good..nice teeth,  nice eyebrows, and what a great nose you have.”  Try it Jenny, your next look in the mirror, pick out the good, not what you want to change.  We are all beautiful people and it’s time that we started recognizing it.  If we don’t see it in ourselves, who will?

I did my time on the floor of the locker room, that was my beautiful moment.;)  It wasn’t so bad, and it definitely gave me a different perspective.  Always enlightening to look at things from a different view-point, you never know what you are going to find, you should try it..

Have a good day!

With Love,

Kate