Shared Moments...

There was a really loud guy at the gym this morning. I mean REALLY LOUD. I wear earbuds and listen to a podcast while I workout. Most everyone around me wears headphones of some type, either in ear or over ear and I have to imagine there is music or a podcast playing in their ears as well. The gym plays music over a speaker so if you don't have your own thing going there is that as well. Now I don't listen to my stuff on blare, I want to be able to hear things around me just for safety reasons, but it's all pretty muted. And especially when I'm lifting and listening to my podcast I just don't have a lot of other focus to go around.

But this guy was LOUD. Like look around the gym to spot him because holy shit he's loud loud.

OOOORRRRPPPHHHH....OOOORRRRPPPHHHH....YAWWWWHHHHHHFFFFF....UUUUUUUUGGGGHHHH....

And rest.

Then he'd do it all over again.

And he was a fairly large guy. Like I'd say 6'4" or so. And big. Not a willowy guy. And he was lifting decent weight but I've see smaller guys lift more. And quieter. His size probably helped with the volume. Lung capacity or something...

He was LOUD.

And you get that every once in awhile. You always have some of your grunters and groaners and whooshers. You have some that you know sometime in the 70s read an article about focusing their chi with noise and do that EEESH sound on the last few lifts. And it's all a bit much, but this guy? This guy was LOUD. Like his chi was so focused it was peeling the paint off the walls.

But here was where it went from super annoying to quite funny.

I wasn't the only one who was looking around for the noise machine. It took me about three of his sets to start. And as my eyes skipped over the weight area I noticed everyone else doing the same. We were all looking for this apparently wounded animal that had broken in to the gym. And as eyes would meet eyes a smile would break out on each face. Usually accompanied by a small head shake or a shoulder shrug.

Little moments of contact all across the gym floor because of this one guy being REALLY LOUD.

It was so ridiculously loud that none of us could help but be amused. I was quieter when I gave birth to Christopher. Seriously. This guy was LOUD.

So smiles here and there. And then by the time the 15th set of his was finishing there were a few heads hanging down, hands over faces, shoulders shaking, trying to contain the spread of laughter.

Okay, would it be somewhat mean in a way that we were all laughing at how FREAKING LOUD this guy was? Maybe...

But I prefer to think we were all focusing our chi on our laughter...

There was a lot of chi focusing.

I mean it, he was LOUD.