The Asian Invasion
The 3 things I love most in this world are women, In-N-Out Burger, and hottubs/massages...not necessarily in that order. My favorite moments in life have included being in a hottub with a beautiful woman massaging me, while her hot friend fed me In-N-Out burger, but I digress.
I recently began working out at a gym (surprised that this hot bod was all natural till now? I know), and my workout routine always ends with a nice trip to the club's jacuzzi. Now, for those of you who neurotically skip the first paragraph of everything you read, I love jacuzzis. Rarely do I spend less than 30 minutes in one, and I have enjoyed all-nighters lasting up to 9 hours in one sitting as well (It was cool getting out the next morning and waiting 8 seconds for my heart to start beating again). My first few days at the gym ended in jacuzzi bliss. Day 4, however, everything changed. I encountered the Asian Invasion.
At first I thought nothing of the family that would come into the jacuzzi (all 6 of them at once)...until it started occurring as regularly as a Kings loss (every day, for those of you outside of lovely California).
I swear, the clan (as I now call them) waits all day for me in the pool area and as soon as they see me enter the jacuzzi, the time has come to join in. I've gotten there at 5pm...the clan is present. 9pm...yep, they're there. I tried to show up at 4am and trick them, and to my relief...they weren't there. Until they popped up from holding their breath under the water. Supplies! It's now obvious I can't escape the wrath of the clan.
Still, aside from the fact that they are always there, nothing is really out of the ordinary. That is until each "character" begins displaying their personality. Now, I could do a whole article on the characters at the gym (like the naked mountain climber; the guy who wears a backpack, hat, and shoes, and stands in front of the mirror naked for who knows how long. Okay, I do it for 7 minutes and 32 seconds. Or the 'toughguy' that's 4 foot 7 and does less weight than me but grunts and yells as if he's giving birth) - but the clan definitely takes the cake.
We have who I assume to be the patriarch of the clan. This guy always sits the closest to me. His biggest issue is spraying the water with some sort of bottle that has been placed along the side of the jacuzzi (I'm not quite sure what the substance is, but my guess would be some sort of germ-killing liquid...or acid. I thought that's what the 14 kilos of chlorine bricks were for, but what do I know?). His favorite thing to do is spray it all around the water which is proceeded by getting that look in his eyes and violently spraying my outline in the water. It's like, 5 squirts per square foot, 15 squirts per square Johnny. Being anything from shy, I ask the gentleman not only what he has, but what he's doing by covering me with this unknown substance. I'm sure he's pretty fluent in English because he answers this open ended question by nodding his head and saying "Ya." It's like "So bottle sprayer, what do you think of the war in Iraq?"
"Ya." Nice. I see many intellectual conversations between bottle sprayer and I in the future.
Then we have the less notable characters: The stair girl. She never dares to enter the dangerous bubbles, but enjoys having nothing but her heels submerged in the water. Maybe she fears the contents of the bottle that dad/grandpa/sensei sprayed all over the place. Next to her is always Newspaper lady. She enjoys the hot waves of H20 while getting her fix of the hot gossip on page H2. Although this is pretty normal behavior, it seems to be her custom to dip the paper in the water. All the way. If there's not a trail of ink leading away from the hottub, Newspaper lady hasn't performed proper procedure. Cellphone guy. I think he just likes to wear his speedos and talk on his cellphone...never even setting foot in the jacuzzi. A one time deal, okay, but in all the days I have seen him, I have never seen him touch the wa-wa.
Now, you may be saying, "John, those people sound mildly neurotic, but they're not hurting you. Unless, of course, the spray contains harmful chemicals. Nonetheless, I have come to expect reports of nothing less than completely irrational and hillarious behavior from your stories."
Fair enough. Which brings us to helicopter woman. She stays but only a few minutes in the patriarch protected jacuzzi. Her mission is the pool. She not only will enter the pool when all the lanes are occupied, but proceed to frantically do the helicopter (where you stretch out your arms and put them about an inch in the water, keep your feet planted, and just go left and right splashing everything in site). I don't mean one or 2 swings and then a laugh, but violently and with extreme determination. For 5 minutes.
It's been 2 work-weeks strong at the gym, and about 8 straight days of the Invasion taking over anytime I go, regardless of the time. My only mission now, find out what's in that spray bottle. And feed it to Cell Phone guy.
*And no, I'm not racist to say the least. If it were a white clan, well, it would be the KKK (<---see, now that's racist!) No...white would be the Caucasian Invasion, African American, the black attack, etc.
~John "sprayed one too many times" Money
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