Health Club Stank

In all the years I've gone to my local health club - whose website you can go to if you click on the title of this post - I've smelled many smells.

You get the obvious body-odor, sweat, gamey smell that most health clubs get.

Then near the kids' playcenter (which, for the health club's benefit, I recently took my kids to and they LOVED) you have the diaper-rotten baby milk smell.

You have the bleachy smell of the tiny towels they hand out for sweat-moppin'.

You have the poop smell from the bathrooms because exercise gets you going.

You have that general b.o. mixed with protein powder like odor that emanates from the free weight room when the big dogs play.

But the one smell that I can't handle - the one that causes me to stop breathing during a hard run on the treadmill?

The "paranoid-old-man wearing a gallon of cologne-a-la-sam malone" smell.

Look, I appreciate the sentiment. They are tryng to squeeze in a few more of the few days they have left on this earth by getting "fit." They don't want to offend, by smelling like that old-person-mixed-with-b.o.-smell. But EVERY SINGLE TIME I SEE AN OLD MAN HEADING MY WAY I SMELL HIM BEFORE HE ARRIVES. EVERY TIME!!!!

I am tempted to post a note, sayng "Too much cologne is as offensive as none at all" so that I might be able to work out without inhaling 2 gallons of alcohol and WHATEVER SKUNK THEY GOT THE COLOGNE FROM.

But that wouldn't be polite, now would it?