Who ya gonna call?

It seemed like an ordinary day at the gym. The View was on the TV's, music was pumping through and women were running on the treadmills and sweating through a step class. I was innocently squirreling away on the elliptical machine when it came on. "Ghostbusters." I heard those opening beats and immediately began to pump harder the the music. My hips were starting to swivel and move to the music.

Just then, the door to the day care opened. The children began to march out, lead by the gym employees. They were shaking their arms and hopping around, screaming "Who ya gonna call? Ghostbusters!" Some wore towels on their heads and waved their arms as they "haunted" the room. They snaked around the weights and machines onto the carpeted aerobic floor. They bounced up and down as they shook their small hips to the intoxicating beats.

"When you're all alone, pick up the phone.." the singer crooned. "Who ya gonna call?" "Ghostbusters!" the kids screamed, throwing their hands in the air. As the beats began to signal the end of the song, the children marched quietly to their room. The ghosts returned from startling old women on weight machines to wiping boogers on the child in front of them. The door shut silently behind them as the song ended and a celine dion song to techno came on.

That would have been interesting enough as it was. But oh no, the Blonde Duck's adventures at the gym were not over yet. I developed a horrible case of gas. I'm talking noisy duck farts that smelled like a dead buzzard. It smelled like I had combined beans and sulfer and burnt it on a stove in an open sun. It didn't come quietly either. It exploded with quick little blurps that I blamed on my shoes as they pounded the elliptical pads. I just prayed no one would notice the smell.

The woman next to me, after my third bloop, began to sniff. She wrinkled her nose and just kept running. The woman next to her began to itch her nose as well. By my ninth mistake, they had moved to machines on the other side of the room. I had a ten foot bubble around me.

As I puttered about the gym doing my squats, with small little farts blurting out in between every ten moves, I began to listen to the class going on next to me. The gym has an open aerobic floor with free weights and weight machines all around. It is a all women's gym, so no one is very self conscious. The aerobics instructor was evidence of this. She taught low impact aerobics for older ladies that included a lot of salsa moves and fun step combinations. She's a Hispanic woman in her late forties or early fifties. She looks wonderful for a woman that age- her body is tighter and more toned than mine. Still, there's a limit. We'll call her Hot Stuff.

Hot Stuff strolled in late for class, as usual. Her short black shorts cupped her butt cheeks as she bounced in cheerfully. She started class and began bouncing around with the music. A remixed seventies song came on, and she began to sing with the words like she usually did. I was doing side lunges when she began singing, " I want a lover, give me a lover, oh baby make it hot, make me want you a lot." My head snapped up and I nearly dropped the weight on my foot. There was a fifty year old woman in hoochie shorts singing that she wanted a lover to a lot of older ladies wearing shirts that professed their undying love to their cats. This was a lot more interesting then side lunges. However, I soldiered on.

"Gimme gimme gimme all your loving tonight," she warbled off key. "I want a lover, I want a lover, oohhhhhhh. I want that hot stuff" she stopped abruptly and gasped.

"Ladies, we want some hot stuff don't we?" she said as she bounced around the room. "We want a hot man right ladies? Well if we keep toning and working ourselves, we'll get that hot man. You know what's even better than a hot man? Pizza! Pizza and a coke! Let's get ourselves a pizza!"

"You shouldn't drink coke in this weather!" an equally obnoxious woman screamed. "It's too hot. I got a bladder infection and kidney problems from drinking too much coke!"

"You can't get a bladder infection from too much coke," another woman disagreed.

"You too can! I did! It burned when I peed!"

"It was probably an STD!"

"Was not! You can't drink coke in this weather. It screws with your body. You're supposed to have 8 glasses of water a day. So you can't have coke!"

"Ok," Hot stuff said undettered. "We'll get some water and a pizza and a hot young guy to deliver it. Am I right girls? Am I right? Move backwards now- 5, 6, 7, 8!"

As I finished my toning, farting quietly, I couldn't help but laugh. I may drive people away with the dreadful smells leaking from my body, but at least I haven't succumbed to wearing short shorts and forty and singing that I want a lover. There's hope for me yet!