Dumb and Dumber Strike

You don’t have to be Albert Einstein to look at me and know that I’m not much of a fan of exercise.  So let me get that on the record right from the very start.  To me, exercise is the brain child of someone trying to sell a book or product – just like all of the other things you do on a daily basis.  EVERYTHING you do is the brainchild of someone wanting to sell a book or a product.

Don’t believe me?  Why’d you buy that cereal you had for breakfast?

Why’d you drive that car to work today?

Why’d you wear those spiffy new tennis shoes to the park today?

So exercise is just that – a reason to sell treadmills, yoga mats, fit-o-gyms, total fitness, ab crunchers, thigh master (LOVED me some Suzanne Somers, eh?) etc.  And you know what?  Exercise begets exercise.  If you exercise, your body becomes addicted to it and all you do is exercise more.  Just look at marathon runners and what they’ve done to their bodies.  They THINK they look healthy!  So conversely by my perverse logic, if you DON’T exercise, your body doesn’t know what it’s missing – and is JUST FINE.

So where is all of this leading?  Today I went to the park with my son and daughter to get out and practice a little soccer.  Beautiful day and we had the entire soccer field to ourselves just going about our merry way and harming no one in the process.  Then they come.  Two guys – approximately 40 years old, both looking like former Marines all buffed out and hairy.  Wearing tank tops and short shorts.  You could tell that they meant business because they came with dumbbells and a football.  That’s the universal symbol for ‘meaning business’.

Whatever…..that’s all fine.  We weren’t taking up the whole field obviously and these guys can have the other half.  Isn’t that what normal people would think to do?  Well, apparently Dumb and Dumber didn’t have that same idea.  They pulled out their football (after stretching for 20 minutes) and just started running around the whole field willy-nilly, running pass patterns, acting generally like they were NFL stars (they weren’t) and pretending that we were not even there (we were).  Still, I’m a tolerant person (believe it or not) and as long as they didn’t bother me or the kids, then I’m going to let it pass as just two more morons in the world.

But then it happened.  According to the meticulously detailed drawing I completed of the incident below, you can see exactly what happened.  It involved the 3,457^th pass pattern being run by Dumb and Dumber, an errant soccer pass by my superstar soccer son, and boom.  The ball rolled towards this guy (Dumber) while he was in full power-running mode and I thought the normal human being kind of thing to do would be to pass it nicely (although I’m sure at full power kick speed) back to us.  Dumber’s reaction?  He rowled.  That’s a combination of a roar and a growl that he belted out at a voluminous volume.  He then cut sharply back to his right away from the ball.  Yep….he rowled.  I’ll say it again.  He ran up to the ball, rowled and cut off to the right.  I was stunned.  It was at this point that putting them in the blog came to mind.  Here’s the diagram of the incident:

So after that they were obviously under close surveillance by us since they weren’t normal people.  They ran a few more plays and then proceeded to their exercise routine.  That exercise routine, pictured too fuzzily here, consisted of at least 15 minutes of SYNCHRONIZED weight pumping, stretching, leg-lifting, grunting (assumed) and sweating.  The key point of this ramble was that it was synchronized and annoying.  Pretty much ANYTHING that is synchronized when it doesn’t have to be is annoying in my book.  Ever walk down a sidewalk in exact step with someone else?  You stutter-step to avoid, don’t you.

Then the final straw.  Another family came in with 3 or 4 kids all practicing soccer at the other goal and were gleefully kicking the ball and shooting, passing – all that normal soccer stuff.  After the synchronized exercising was completed, it was time for the annual Dumb & Dumber wind sprints.  Where did they sprint you may ask?  Directly BETWEEN the soccer goal and the group shooting balls into the goal.  They made the people wait to shoot (which I certainly would NOT have done) while they ran wind sprints across the field between the people and the goal.

It all reminded me of an episode of Star Trek where they actually were in a slightly phased dimension.  They couldn’t actually SEE anything else going on although everyone else could see them.  I think that episode ended with the guy in the red shirt getting offed.  Or Captain Picard smugly smiling and saying ‘Engage….’.

All of this leads me to my conclusion.  I guess I don’t really hate exercise.  I hate exercisers.  The people that make treadmills, power gyms, etc. actually have it right.  They want to keep these idiots inside their own house and not subject the general public to them.  From now on, I support them 100%.