The Lout in the Gym

I wanted my exercise yesterday, so I went to the Y to play some basketball. “You should know, we have no heat in the gym today,” they told me at the desk. I said I’d work hard and generate my own eat.

Well, they weren’t kidding–there was no heat, and the gym was very cold. That’s why I was the only one in it. But I worked myself hard, and the cold wasn’t cold enough to make me stop.

By and by another guy came in, and he used the other basket. And then a third man entered the gym.

He brought some kind of gizmo with him, set it up on the bench, and began blasting the gym with really loud, really crummy “music.” Just like it was his gym and he was the only one in it.

This is what you get when people are raised by comic books and video games. This lout, this oaf, goes shambling through life unaware that there is anybody else who ought to be considered. He is oblivious to the presence of others. The only way he’ll stop doing something is if someone makes him stop.

You see more and more of this lately. There are now yobbos who double-park on the busy main street of my home town, creating traffic jams for everybody else. They park wherever they feel like parking. They play their “music” at you. When they walk their dogs, they leave the neighborhood decorated with little plastic bags full of faeces. They toss their fast-food scraps into your garbage can. They aim powerful floodlights at your bedroom window all night long. They talk on their cell phones as loud as they can in restaurants, in movie theaters.

Go ahead, tell me I’m wrong and our culture is in good shape.