MINNESOTANS SHOULD NOT HAVE TANS IN THE WINTER

It is winter. Not a typical winter in Minnesota, but still; the sunrise is late, it gets dark early, many days are cloudy and although we have had a rather above average winter it still is cold compared to other states.
I've been spending time at a fitness center daily to rehab my shoulder. I have never been a regular in a gym locker room since high school. I never did like it as a kid and for the most part I don't like it as an old man either. No guys aren't snapping me with their towels or making fun of my body shape. Evidently as we get older, men just internalize some of their manly deeds and just fantasize them or whisper them to each other.

But there are a few things that bother me about being in a locker room with a bunch of naked men. Some guys just go to the gym to sweat and shower. They don't sweat because of a great workout. It's because they spend a half an hour or more in the sauna. After the sauna, some guys take a quick shower and off they go, but other guys shave and preen themselves as if they were gods. Now all this sauna activity does bother me a little but to each their own.

Other fellows spend more time talking than doing. I'm not talking about their work habits, although that may be the case. I am talking about their lack of using the gym for exercise. Again, we are social creatures and a gym is a healthy place to hangout. So I need to give these guys a break.

There are other fellows that have a way of walking around nude that just seems a bit abnormal to me. They just seem too comfortable in their naked skin! To me it is almost like they are walking around in their living room wearing casual slacks, shirt, smoking jacket and comfy slippers. For Pete's sake wrap a towel around your loins occasionally, when you are strutting around! One would think that these fellows all shared fantastic sculpted bodies, but it is not restricted to one body type. But again, this is not my main locker room complaint.

The thing that bothers me the most is guys with tans. It is so unnatural for a guy from Minnesota to have a tan in the dead of winter. Our bodies should be white! Every thing is dead outside and we should be a reflection of that environment. Granted maybe a few of the guys have just come back from Florida or some other exotic sunny place, but I suspect the majority of these guys go to tanning salons. I've never heard one of these tan guys say, " I just got back from Arizona". In fact, very few of them ever speak. Maybe they know they should not be laying around in a tanning bed. I've never talked to any of them; even to just ask them the time of day, as I fear I will blurt out some indiscretion. But whenever I see a tan guy in the locker room it think; Minnesotans should not have tans in the winter.