King of Gym

  

        The few weeks before spring break, I was the girl who everyone hated. I was lounging on the couch, helping myself to thirds on sugary desserts, and sitting out in the sun reading a book while other girls on my college campus jogged to spin class and found time to squeeze multiple workouts in between their midterms. While I was going back home to El Paso to chow on Mexican food and snuggle with my dog, they were preparing for a week in a string bikini in Cabo. However, I decided after spring break I would get my act together and stop living a double life as a sloth. I live in an apartment complex on campus that is literally less than 20 feet away from the gym. I decided that it was going to be silly easy to go to the gym everyday sophomore year. Lets just say that I have spent more time watching the water polo team come and go from practice from my window then I do at the gym.

        However, by some miracle, I made it to the the gym and onto a treadmill yesterday afternoon. I was fiddling with my ipod and grumbling under my breath to the beat of my sneakers slapping against the machine, “i. hate. run. ing. this. is. not. fun. i. hate. run. ing. this. is. not. fun,” when I noticed there was a very gangly boy about my age making his way through the sea of weight machines. He had on jeans, a plain t-shirt, and sunglasses. I looked closer. He also had a stick that aided him to feel for things in front of him. This boy was blind. For the next half hour, I watched him make his way from machine to machine. He would put down his stick, feel around to get a sense of what kind of machine it was, and figure out how it worked if he wasn’t familiar with what it was supposed to do. He wasn’t intimidated by not knowing how something worked. He made no apologies or excuses. He didn’t let the hordes of muscly frat boys fist pounding and saying things like, “Hey wanna grab some muscle milk at Cafe 84 and then head to the house to pregame the mixer?” let him shrink away into a less populated section of the room. He was there to get done what he came to the gym for... and nothing was going to stop him. 

       Obstacles will always be present. Some people are handed little obstacles and others are handed bigger ones... but either way, overcoming them is dependent on attitude and determination.