My mother used to say, “Behave in public as though I’m looking over your shoulder.”
For this eight-year-old boy, that landed harder than “Be good” or “Do the right thing.” Maybe it was the mental image. I wonder how much better off the world would be if adults subscribed to this standard. Like, if my mother, arms crossed, one eyebrow raised, were standing over Donald Trump saying, “And just what do you think you’re doing, mister?”
Her warning ranked up there with other equally effective disciplinary statements disguised as cautionary tales. Take these: “Always wear clean underwear in case you get into an accident and end up in the hospital,” or “Don’t eat snow or you’ll get worms.” (Never mind if it’s yellow or not.)
These thoughts were going through my head as I sat at the red light at Bayview and Millwood, on my way to the GoodLife gym at Davisville. That’s because I was witnessing the driver next to me picking his nose. Actually, this isn’t the anomaly you might think it is. Maybe it’s because drivers figure they’re alone, lost in thought, or maybe they just don’t care. Or maybe they believe their windows are made of one-way glass. Maybe they just didn’t have a mother like mine.
I soon pull into the underground parking lot entrance off Mt. Pleasant. With its gloomy lighting, flaking concrete ceilings, and water leaching from numerous cracks, the place has all the ambiance of post-explosion Chernobyl. I walk past a rusting tangle of pipes that looks like a mini oil refinery from the 1950s and enter the dank stairwell.
I’m a couple of steps into psyching myself up for my workout when I’m treated, two staircases above me, to a loud burp, a sneeze, and a staccato burst of flatulence that would make a bubble wrap factory blush. Impressive, I think: a bodily-function trifecta.
Instinctively, I want to quicken my pace in hopes of casting some shame-inducing looks at the perpetrator. At the same time, I realize I’m about to pass through their blast radius, with a decent chance of either catching a cold, smelling what they ate an hour ago… or being olfactorily slammed with a human-composted version of what they ate last night.
By the time I reach the front desk, however, there are too many people for me to decipher who the multi-orifice offender might be. Damn. No satisfying shameful eye-darts today.
In the change room, I gear up and head into the washroom as part of my pre-workout routine. A fellow member crosses paths with me, bypassing the sinks entirely, on his way from the urinal to the gym floor. Again, I think: why? I don’t know a single mother who doesn’t drill “Wash your hands” into their kids. But if no mom’s around to witness it, I suppose the argument becomes existential: did a tree really fall in the forest?
Note to self: wipe down the equipment BEFORE using it.
After enduring the usual teenage boys from nearby schools who exclusively train arms, pose in mirrors, loud-talk over earbuds, and spend long “rest” periods checking their social feeds, I head to the change room, more than a little relieved the workout’s over for another day.
On my way down the stairwell back to Chernobyl, I take a final swig of my water bottle. Inadvert-ently, I inhale the last of it. That’s not a metaphor. I actually inhale it.
My mis-swallow sends me into an immediate coughing fit. I sputter and hack, sounding like my first car, an old 1972 Ford Cortina that would run on, long after I’d turned off the key and walked away. My eyes bulge, my tongue hangs out, I pound my chest, trying to clear my airways. In the process, I swallow so much air that I involuntarily let out a belch that echoes up and down the stairwell, just as another member rounds the corner and stops at the bottom. They look up at me with derision.
I guess I got my shameful eye-dart after all.
They sidle past me, careful to keep their distance. I try to explain. No words emerge. My hand clutches my shirt, my face frozen in a red wince. A tiny gasp escapes. I stagger through the door into the garage.
All I can manage is a wheezy, “Sorry, Mom.”
