Wear the Right Stuff or Go Naked

Recently at the gym I saw one of those women covered all in black except for a little slit for her eyes. She was on the treadmill, going at a relatively slow walking pace. But her outfit wasn’t right for working out, and sure enough, she took a tumble.

Five or six personal trainers rushed to help her. She made quite a seen. Not only did she go down, her long robes got caught in the treadmill so she was pretty much stuck where she was.

She was okay, but the trainers had trouble getting her long black robes out of the treadmill. One suggested using a pair of scissors. The woman complained loudly – well sort of. I guess she doesn’t speak English, because all she’d say was “no no no.”

So the trainers yanked and pulled and pried. Eventually through much struggling, they were able to remove the long black robes from the treadmill.

One of the trainers told her she shouldn’t be wearing anything long which might get caught in the machines. Maybe she should toss on a pair of shorts, or even a track suit, he suggested.

The woman, looking very much the part out of place as a beat-up old mule on a busy city highway, just kept saying “no no no.”

After all the trainers had left, this woman – in all her long black robes – got back up on the treadmill and continued as if nothing had happened.

She didn’t fall down again, from what I saw, but she still shouldn’t have been on that machine in that outfit at all.

Gyms are relatively safe places, provided you know a little something about your body, working out, and are dressed right.

Wearing the wrong stuff can make the gym a dangerous place, as the scary looking terrorist-like woman on the treadmill discovered.

I know terrorist is a strong word. But these people aren’t in their country, they are in mine. And in Canada we don’t run around with completely covered with nothing more than a slit to see.

If I went into a Mack’s Milk wearing a ski mask, how long do you think it would take the store clerk to panic, call the cops and start preying for his life?

I am a firm believer in Canada’s multicultural openness. We warmly welcome just about anyone from just about anywhere. Practice your culture’s values at home as you would in your native land. But when you are out in public, get your mindset on one thing – this isn’t your native country, this is CANADA and we don’t do shit like that here.

If you really don’t like wearing something as simple as a t-shirt and blue jeans, fine – go naked. Naked may not be comfortable in our climate, and you may have more wrinkles than most care to see, but at least you’d fit in more than wearing scary outfits that conceal who you are.

A while back in the winter, I wrote about some Indian guy who was wearing open-toed sandals in the middle of winter. It was -30 C outside, and there was lots of ice and snow. Sandals may be fine in warm climates, or even here in the summer – but in winter!?!?

What the hell is wrong with these people? Do they want our free healthcare so badly they are willing to get frost bite to try it out?

Maybe they need to fall off a treadmill nearly breaking their neck to experience the thrill of an emergency ward in one of our over crowded hospitals.

Maybe our hospitals wouldn’t be over crowded if we didn’t let idiots into our country? Anyone told by professionals what to wear – like the woman on the treadmill – and then ignores their advice is an idiot.

Breaking your neck so that you can practice your scary customs out in public in my country isn’t the thing geniuses do.

But then, I suppose we don’t let in many of those geniuses anymore. Just those idiots that will do stupid things – like walking across a major highway, wearing sandals in winter, or long black robes on a treadmill.

I can see the headlines now – Woman Walks to Death on Treadmill.