"What? Friends listen to 'Endless Love' in the dark!?"

So here’s how bad I am at the whole dating, knowing, flirting thing.

My great uncle J.T. died earlier this week (possible entry coming on this later) here in Nashville. The funeral was today, and my mother came into town. I had the added joy of jumping through the hoops necessary to renew my vehicle registration. Between the red tape, the preaching, and the heartblessing, I was unable to get to the gym at my normal time (2:30 PM CT).

One particularly cool feature of the gym of which I am a member is “Cardio Theater.” I’m not referring to the brand name of the television screens present in front of some cardio machines. I’m talking about a dark room, with just a touch of red light, with a movie screen and high quality sound system. It’s terraced, with different forms of cardio equipment on each tier. It is very similar to a real movie theatah.

Just outside of the Cardio Theater is the schedule of the movies that will be running each day. As I went in tonight, I was verrry tickled to see that tonight’s feature would be “Happy Gilmore,” starring Adam Sandler, Christopher McDonald, Julie Bowen, and Carl Weathers (for the record… I might be a total pus, but I miss Carol Vessey). I smiled, joined the maybe two other people who were already in the room, mounted (he, he) the chosen piece of equipment for the night, and began to exercise my cardiovasculus.

Some two minutes into tonight’s activity, a woman approached the cardio theater from the outside. She peeked in through the glass door with an obvious curiosity, noted the name of the film on the wall, and entered the room. I could tell, from what little light was present, that she had the capacity to be attractive.

You probably know what I mean.

One supposes that you can never be too careful when determining a person’s level of physical attraction in a fairly dark room, and that to me is enough reason not to try too hard. My rule of thumb is, “I don’t date shadows.” Come to think of it, I don’t really date people either. Nevertheless, I generally will ask myself whether or not a woman who is new to me is attractive or not. In this case, the answer was, “Well, she has an attractive shadow.”

And then I stopped thinking about it and got on with the borophyl… er, the movie.

Aaaaaaaaanyway. She took two steps into the virtually empty room and stopped to survey the area. She chose the same type of equipment I was using, but began with the first one she encountered as she entered. She approached the machine, looked at it, looked around again, and then started walking.

You already know what happened. She skipped five machines and then mounted (he he) the machine next to the one on which I was already laboring. I thought that was odd.

Odd.

She began her exercise. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed her turn her head and look at me. In fact, she looked at me for what felt like a week. It was actually about fifteen seconds. Then, she turned her head back to the movie and began to watch. It seemed unusual to me that she sat there and stared for so long.

Unusual. I would never do that. Not sober anyway.

It was at about this time that Kevin Nealon goes into his bit about “it” being “circular.” She laughed out loud. Sounded kinda forced. Then she did it again. And then she proceeded to continue to laugh out loud at every funny thing that happened for the next thirty minutes or so, looking briefly at me every five minutes or so.

She finished her exercise before I did. She proceeded to stretch in the theater, then went out to the weight room to do some legs.

I followed five minutes later, stretched, and walked past her on the way to another area. Curious, I looked at her face as I passed by. She had this blank “I have Big Slick and don’t want to show it” look on her face (which was uniquely attractive, by the way) as she looked back.

And I didn’t even smile.

I just kept walking, thinking nothing of it. I did the rest of my work pretty quickly, and then walked back toward the front door. I waved good bye to the front desk attendant, opened my car door, and sat down.

And then I started thinking about it. “Hang on. An attractive girl is alone in a gym that caters to young professionals at 7:45 PM on a perfect early autumn Friday night, and then she…”

And then I beat my head against my steering wheel numerous times.

Clueless... I think?