Working Out Hard or Hardly Working Out?


            I bought a Total Gym the other day.
            Two days later, I am sore from the assembly. I have yet to use the machine itself.
            Phase 1: The Warm Up: Began when the delivery-truck driver, the one who drives the loudest vehicle outside of a garbage truck, managed to somehow sneak up, open his bone-rattling, squeaky rear slide-down door, unload a dolly, off load a 350-pound box, get it to my front door, deposit it, ring my doorbell, race back to his truck, re-load the dolly, close the slide-down door, start his roaring engine, and accomplish his getaway – somehow without me hearing or seeing him.
            These are the delivery people, who at Christmas, will ring the bell and wait for ten minutes to hand you a box containing eye shadow – in exchange for a tip, mind you.
            At 2 p.m., I got a text notification that the box was delivered at 1:33 p.m.
If their schedules are so streamlined, and they are talented enough to drop a box off within three minutes of their start-time window, they could notify me three minutes before they get to my house.
Nonetheless, I located the box on my doorstep, and after several false starts trying to move the 350-pound behemoth, I managed to “walk” it to the front door.
To say that I worked up quite a sweat is an understatement, given that it’s August in Florida, an again, the box weighed 350 pounds.
When we reached the doorway, I dropped the box on the top of a wheeled work seat, from the garage, which I used to transport the precariously perched parcel from the foyer, through the kitchen, through the dining room and out back on the porch.
            Phase 2: The Real Workout: Started with the opening of the instruction manual.
The truth is, I had almost completely assembled the Total Gym, without the instruction manual, when I decided to read the instructions and somehow managed to almost re-box the entire machine.
I started over from scratch reading the booklet.
Forget Sudoku. Forget crossword puzzles. Forget Mensa. I am certain that this step-by-step dissertation was written by a symposium of post-graduate level students earning their doctorates.
            The manual provided illustrations, but they were very specific, showing how pieces fit together to form parts. It was a bit like looking at an anatomy and physiology book picture of a spleen, but not being shown where the spleen is in the body. I could not even tell on which end I was supposed to be working.
The only two parts that I got together easily was the squat stand and flip chart assemblies. That’s the foot board and the torture manual, in laymen’s terms.
            My favorite instructions were the ones on how to attach the ab crunch boards.
            “Be sure to give enough clearance so that your head does not hit the Vertical Column when performing these exercises,” then in bold, “DO NOT attach the Ab Crunch Boards to the Rail on the hole that is closest to the Vertical Column, doing so could result in possible serious injury or death.” The next instruction also contained the phrase, “which could result in possible serious injury or death.” Are you kidding me? I bought this machine to avoid death, not facilitate it!
            The ab crunch boards were essentially two cushioned forearm rests to be fastened, with four screws, to metal handles. Four screws. Four holes. I managed, with only two screws for each handle, to create a transformer-toy level apparatus that flanged out about three feet from the machine.
            The writers could have simply written, “Match the pad holes to the arm holes.”
In 90-plus degree heat, I got the machine together. I was drenched and decided that I had done enough workout for one day.
I got a margarita, put on my bathing suit, and plopped into the pool on a raft whose instructions simply said, “Open plug. Inflate.”
Maybe tomorrow I’ll actually attempt to use the thing, but for now, putting together the Total Gym was workout enough for me.

           

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