Here’s the thing, I don’t go to the gym to mack. It probably isn’t even still referred to as that. I never was the kind of girl that actively tried to grab a guy’s attention, so forgive me my clumsy articulation of the act of flaunting your desire to be noticed in public by someone to whom you are attracted.

[I am well aware that every word I type plants me more firmly in the I’m-getting-too-old-for-this-shit-category]

I digress.

To you, teenaged girl with the shorts hiked up to define where your cheeks end and your crack begins-

1. High knee exercises can in fact be accomplished with your back to the wall as opposed to my face.

2. One does not have to weave through the free weight section like a Family Circus comic* to get to the water cooler.

3. Some people do come to the gym to work out, no really.

4. The guys you are trying to turn on are more turned on by their own reflections. Seriously.

5.The mat is not for writhing, unless it’s a Whitesnake video**.

6. Jennifer Beales*** wants her top back.

7. Dirty hair isn’t sexy, it’s just dirty.

8. If you want to have fun with your pre-kids, pre-bills, pre-deadline addled body, go bigger than the YMCA.

Sincerely,

A mom of 3 who can still rock it, but chooses to do so for her husband, not grunting meatheads slinging gallon-sized jugs of water and debating whether to bulk up or tone up first.

*It’s a comic that used to run in newspapers, which were a way we got the news in the olden days.

**Before nudity became commonplace among performers, music videos provided men with writhing women.

***Before she played a lesbian that you may or may not have been old enough to know about, she defined heterosexual sexy in an off the shoulder top. She also welded and I’d bet my shortest shorts you can’t do that.