It’s sandwiched between a garage and a bar where the burning embers of the regulars’ cigarettes dance through the night air as snippets of hard pounding classic rock rolls out of the constantly opening and closing door. If you follow the sidewalk you’ll find a wing place, a bodega, a laundromat and a Spanish speaking church.
A strip mall gym is a misfit.
Slightly buzzed patrons of the wing shack don’t even pretend to not stare when they walk by the garage doors and see all the collapsed sweat-drenched bodies trying to catch their breath to the backbeat of thumping hip hop. Sometimes the church goers will even cheer for us as we Frogger through the cars in the parking lot as we make the quarter mile lap around the buildings.
I arrived at this place during a time when I wasn’t that fond of myself. My best friend had moved. I was lonely and I was eating my feelings.
I joined this gym in hopes to lose some weight and get in better shape. However, what I have gained there, in an unheated and uncooled square filled with barbells and rowing machines and a type of stationary bike that can make grown men cry, was friendship, and support and community.
During the time of social distancing, my little misfit strip mall gym, is one of the things that I miss the most. Granted, the gruelling workouts appeal to my masochistic tendencies but the coaches are graciously sending at-home versions of workouts to us every day. They even loaned out a bunch of equipment before we had to close up shop. Therefore, I can still perform the basic level of fitness that I had been doing before a global pandemic reshaped our lives.
It’s just that it’s not the same. I miss the smiles and high fives and good natured trash talk and I especially miss the hugs. It is the only place that I’ve ever been a part of where a liberal tattooed heathen such as myself would be wrapped in a supportive warm embrace by a conservative Catholic teetotaler without a moment’s hesitation.
And, I know that this isn’t a particularly unique sentiment, especially right now, but I miss my friends. The people I have met there have become some of my best friends…emergency-contact-trust-my-kid-with-them type of friends. They have helped me become a warmer, more peacefully confident version of myself.
So, yeah, a stripmall gym is certainly an oddball. However, there have been evenings when I have walked out of there and watched the cotton candy colored clouds pirouette against a setting Carolina sun and knew that I had found the place that I had been looking for all of my life.
Now, I just can’t wait to go home.
This article was written by a guest blogger. The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and do not reflect the opinions of Bob Lacey, Sheri Lynch or the Bob & Sheri show.
Soshally Awkward
Sosha Lewis is a writer whose work has been featured in The Washington Post, Huffington Post, MUTHA Magazine and The Charlotte Observer. She writes about her sometimes wild, sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking past filled with free-lunches, a grimy sports bar, a six foot tall Albino woman who tried to save her teenage soul, felonious, drug addicted parents, an imaginary friend named Blueberry and growing up nestled in the coal-dusted mountains of West Virginia.
