Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Idiot tax: $64

Because I’m a morning person in the same way marriage-equality opponents are decent human beings, I always take the time to pack my protein shakes and my sucker-born-every-minute weightlifting supplements and my lunch and my gym clothes and my work clothes the night before my 7:00 am sessions with my trainer. And to the domestic partner’s endless irritation amusement, I also recite everything out loud to myself as I pack so I don’t forget anything. And so far, my system has worked flawlessly.

Until this morning. Once I was stripped to my fancy new 2(x)ist square-cut briefs (electric blue!) in the locker room at 6:45 am today, I discovered that I’d forgotten to pack my gym shorts. Fortunately, I’d caught an earlier bus so I had a little cushion of time to figure out how to fix this little setback. Fortunately, my gym has a fancy little clothing boutique right by the check-in desk. Fortunately, I had a $100 gift card I’d gotten for using eight training sessions in a month (a promotion that doesn’t make a lot of business sense to me, but I got $100 out of it so what do I care?). Unfortunately, the boutique wasn’t open when I got redressed and went down to cash in my gift card.

But the front desk clerk—who has a preternatural ability to remember people’s names and I stand in awe of him for that skill every morning when I don’t even have to dig my membership card out of my wallet—found a boutique employee in some back room and she opened the store for me and I got some brand new shorts and made it to my training session only one minute late. Whew.

I bought the cheapest shorts I could find at their little boutique. And they were still $64. Which still technically leaves me $36 in the black, but if I’d had to fork over real money this would have been a financially frustrating learning experience … albeit a financially frustrating learning experience that netted me some pretty fabulous new gym shorts. Apparently $64 buys you an extra dose of sexy because the shorts look really good on my butt. And just wait until tomorrow when I pack a shirt that actually goes with the shorts. I’ll have the $64 color-coordinated butt of death. Assuming I remember to bring my butt.

No comments: