My Planet Fitness gym in Hernando County has signs posted here and there reminding members not to judge.
That is a noble aspiration. So is clean politics, affordable homeowners insurance, and a mosquito that bites only people you don’t like.
Still, a judgment-free gym is a hard sell.
I was reminded of that this morning while taking in the usual parade of ambition, vanity, orthopedic compromise and spandex. Across the room stood three geriatric bachelors who seemed to think the fitness center had been converted overnight into a senior dating lounge. Their leader wore a tank top that revealed broad shoulders, worked-over arms, and enough thin, spotted, weathered skin to suggest the man had spent years under both barbells and the Florida sun. From the waist up, he looked ready for battle. From the knees down, he looked like he was standing on a pair of boiled pretzels.
There he was, hovering around a much younger woman using a hip machine, while his two sidekicks leaned against nearby equipment grinning and swapping jokes like unpaid commentators at the Creeper Games. They weren’t working out. They were conducting field research in bad manners.
Then the moment of civic correction arrived.
A younger man, built like he could lift a pickup by the bumper, walked over and asked the two machine-blockers if they were actually going to use the equipment. No speech. No drama. Just one clean question that hit like a judge’s gavel.
The old boys broke formation and drifted off, shaking their heads as if they had just witnessed a shocking decline in American values. Apparently, in their minds, the real offense was not loitering around a young woman like three hopeful buzzards at a county fair. No, the real offense was being told to move.
That should have been enough spectacle for one trip to the gym. But the gym is never just a gym. It is a live-action documentary on the strange habits of our species.
A little later, I noticed a woman in her 30s wearing workout clothes so tight and so close to her natural skin tone that from certain angles a second look became less curiosity than due diligence. The outfit traced every contour with the determination of a surveyor marking wetlands. The gym says don’t judge, and I truly try to honor that. But the human eye is quicker than the human conscience, and sometimes an opinion forms before good breeding can put on the brakes.
Meanwhile, I was wrestling with 100-pound barbell curls and discovering that my arms had reached an age where they now prefer discussion over conflict. That’s when a 40-something man behind me, who was deadlifting way more than he should, released a sound that did not belong in a health club. It belonged on the Serengeti. It was the kind of roar, groan, belch and death-rattle combination one imagines from an elephant being dragged down by lions.
I flinched.
My first response was not judgment. My first response was survival.
Only after the moment passed and I realized no actual wildlife emergency was underway did I permit myself a thought or two.
This is the problem with the modern “judgment-free zone.” It sounds wonderful on the wall. But in real life, you cannot crowd a room with mirrors, mating rituals, aging peacocks, flesh-toned Lycra, male digestive eruptions and people who think wiping down equipment is a communist plot, then expect the rest of us to float through the place in a state of enlightened neutrality.
We’re Floridians. We notice things.
We notice the old Romeo in the tank top trying to recapture 1978.
We notice the outfit that appears to have been applied with a paint roller.
We notice the man making noises that cause others to check for hoofprints.
And yes, from time to time, we judge.
Not always cruelly. Not always aloud. But honestly? Sometimes judgment is just observation with better timing.
The sign on the wall may preach acceptance, and that’s fine. But out on the gym floor — under the fluorescent lights, between the dumbbells and the delusions — the truth survives.
This may be a judgment-free zone in theory.
In Florida, it’s mostly a judgment-delayed zone.
Larry D. Clifton is a native Floridian, a graduate of Eckerd College and the author of the science fiction thriller “Martin’s Secret,” available at Barnes & Noble.