I walked into FitRec for the first time ever last week ‘-‘- to get a flu shot. Because I don’t work out, I get optional vaccines as a substitute for working out. It’s kind of my shtick. In fact, I don’t even own a pair of suitable workout sneakers, unless you count the fantastic pair of leather Nike Zoom Blazers I scored at TJMaxx a few years ago for only $15. But no one ever counts those. FitRec was to be the only place on campus I’d never allow myself to go to. Not because I think I’m too good for it, but because I knew I’d be scorned there. I guess I’ve always given off this aura of apathy when it comes to physical fitness. Even my earliest gym teachers picked up on this, and they eventually took to resigning to the fact that while the other kids would engage in a decent amount of jocular high-fivery after a good set of volleyball, I’d only go so far as to pick my cuticles or snap my tongue against the back of my front teeth. Gymnasiums are just not welcoming to me ‘-‘- and I’m not the kind of girl to show up to parties uninvited. But when I found out that the flu vaccine was only available at FitRec, I felt my face blanche. I can handle a needle piercing my skin without much more reaction than perhaps a bored sigh, but when it comes to the piercing glares of the entire women’s crew team and the scathing whispers of a whole school of elliptical-ing sorority girls, well, that’s when the fear sets in. They know it, I know it, and even those forbidding-looking steel turnstiles at the entrance to the place know it ‘-‘- I’m foreign, I’m weak, I’m vulnerable. And when I got to the turnstile, I felt exactly how Hunter S. Thompson must have felt in Fear and Loathing when he’s high on ether and his motor skills stop working right outside of the entrance to a Las Vegas attraction. This was a seminal event in my Boston University career, and instead of sauntering right through like I would have anyplace else, I found that I couldn’t walk at all. I misstepped, I fumbled with my I.D., I raised my eyebrows in confusion and looked to my friend Daria for help, but she had disappeared through to the other side. So there I was, right at the threshold -‘-‘- right on the precipice ‘-‘- of slipping into what I had always considered nothing more than a black hole that campus athletes used to get to other, stranger dimensions where fitness was considered fun, and I couldn’t even get through the checkpoint. My card wouldn’t swipe! The snickering FitRec employees behind the counter were delighted with my repeated failures. I guess I can’t blame them ‘-‘- I was in kitten-heeled boots, a dress and a beret, and I couldn’t figure out the ID swiping mechanism, which left me whimpering like a small animal. Finally, one of them ‘-‘- the blonde girl with the stupid ponytail ‘-‘- spoke up and asked me when the last time I’d been to FitRec was, but her inflection was more along the lines of that of a GreenPeace volunteer on the street asking you when you last did something good for your country. We immediately hated each other. She turned to her coworker ‘-‘- the brunette boy with the stupid bro shag haircut ‘-‘- and they exchanged some pretentious technical jargon about ‘signing a release’ and ‘accepting the terms.’ Those jerks, I thought as I hung my head and followed the girl to a set of computers on the wall ‘-‘- put there specifically to humiliate all FitRec foreigners, no doubt ‘-‘- trying to fool me into agreeing to their terms, just so they can string me up on the rock wall and leave me hanging there for weeks as some trophy. A spectacle. With a sign around my neck saying, ‘abandon hope all ye who enter here.’ But I needed that flu shot. Especially after being in a place like FitRec, which is essentially a literal stomping ground for BU’s finest, where all the kids get together to exchange germs and patronizing glances and workout fish stories. The place is pure muscle ‘-‘- thousands of scantily clad students there at all hours just climbing and heaving and pushing one another against walls and trailing sweaty fingertips across tabletops and ordering expensive smoothies. And when I saw how all of the windows weren’t quite as see-through as they might have been, likely due to a layer of smeared sweat crusted in a layer of fine dust ‘-‘- well, that’s when I realized I didn’t want FitRec as much as it didn’t want me. We were just two oppositely charged entities. Luckily, I didn’t have to stay long. All I needed was the shot ‘-‘- a cubic centimeter or two of artificial health to snap me out of the FitRec coma I was in. And when I was finished, I sprinted quite quickly right out of there, leaving behind the strange, Gonzo world I’d so tactlessly entered. Because. while some people run in FitRec, there are others who prefer to get fit running from it.
Lauren Rodrigue, a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences, is a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. She can be reached at [email protected].