I got there at about 10 am and there was more people then the last time I was there. Someone was even on the lone elliptical shoved in between the 40 treadmills and 25 cycle machines. So decided to try a treadmill instead. All the treadmills in the place have these huge flat screens hanging above them so every person has their own individual television, which was pretty cool, I thought. I got on one and was going at a good clip, flipping channels at the same time, when I'm suddenly staring at this very graphic video of something giving birth. LOUDLY.
I, silly foreigner that I am, had assumed that the volume on the TV was off because I couldn't hear it. Little did I know that all it needed was the right station and viola! the whole gym could hear the grunts the creature was making.
Instinctively, I covered my eyes and jammed my finger onto the up channel button again and again. The channel didn't change no matter how many times I pressed it. But the speed of the treadmill did. In my blind panic I had actually been jamming my finger on the up speed button. The treadmill picked up speed then, getting so fast that I could no longer reach the correct button to either change the channel or stop the treadmill.
I can only imagine the image that I gave everyone. Here's this foreign chick running flat out on the treadmill waving her arms wildly at the screen which, through carefully crafted camera angles, was not missing a minute of the birth of baby whatever-it-was. The walls practically resounded with the noises the creature was making.
Unfortunately, I am not making this up. I did not see this on a Mr. Bean rerun. It is all too clearly playing in my mind over and over as I type this.
On the one hand, I now know - in living color - what it looks like when a kiwi gives birth to an egg that is 2/3rds its body size. On the other, now at least 15 Koreans think that American girls are lunatics.
