Aliens

There’s a scene in “Men in Black” where K is telling J that aliens have lived among us for some time and shows him a split screen of some of the wackier celebrities, politicians, etc. The implication is that they’re obvious if you give them any thought.

But, that’s fiction. The part about those people, I mean. In reality, there are aliens among us and I know who they are.

I returned to the gym today after a week’s vacation (and a couple days to recover from the vacation). While I was gone, someone evidently added a few pounds to each weight plate and lengthened the running track. Fifteen minutes into the workout, I was sweating enough to float an aircraft carrier.

I heard a greeting. Wiping the burning sweat from my eyes, I was able to make out Ed standing in front of me. He was returning from two weeks of vacation travel.

He told me he was signed up for one of those team races the coming weekend where you cover ridiculous distances with various forms of human powered locomotion in an attempt to generate extreme pain and induce cardiac arrest. And, you get a t-shirt. His partner became disabled (gee, what are the odds?) and he wanted to know if I would sub.

Here’s a guy who’s been off his program twice as long as I have (although I spent my week as though the plane was going down) and he’s ready to go out and pump his limbs across half a small state. It’s going to take me a month just to get back to where I can make the control panel on the stationary bike light up.

He’s not the only one. Another friend who doesn’t train at all, as far as I know, called me last year and asked what I was doing that weekend. I told him I was competing in an open water swim across the Ohio River and back. He said that sounded like it could be a hoot and asked how he could sign up.

I trained for six months and my heart was about punching through my chest at the finish line. He had no preparation and not only finished, but beat me. And then, I crawled out of the water and found him trying to pick up the woman who had driven me to the race.

When I was in high school, I competed in water polo during the summer, up until football practice started in August. Water polo is somewhere between sprint swimming and wrestling, making it an exhausting workout. The first week of football practice included running up and down the bleachers in the heat of the day. Gary, who spent his summers working in a frozen custard stand, would lap me on the stands, barely breathing hard.

Humans, like me, sweat, strain and grunt to achieve some small measure of muscle tone and endurance, however fleeting. These others, my friends, are the aliens.