Whale stories, Episode 2: Slip and slide Paul So I go to the gym almost every day, at first I felt somewhat ashamed of going so often and would get comments from family and friends that going 4 times a week was not healthy. They loved to project their insecurities on me, "you know it's not healthy to workout so much", "I always see you at the gym, hehehe", why is that funny? go fuck yourself. Eventually after watching my uncle die at the hands of lord beetus and decided I don't care what people think, I want to be healthy, I enjoy exercising and if people think I'm insane for working out on a friday then so be it, fuck them. I sleep better, have more energy and I don't have to worry about lying in a hospital bed looking at a foot wrapped up in bandages because another toe had to be amputated. Now because I go to the gym so often I can pretty much tell who is working out and who is just there to just jerk off at the thought of doing something. One guy in particular I made the mistake of trying to help, lets call him Paul. Paul waddled into the gym one day and decided to walk next to me on the treadmills. When he saw how far I had walked, he struck up a conversation. "wow! you walked a mile!", yes just a single mile but to Paul I had just climbed Everest and he wanted to know how I managed such an amazing super human feat. I wasn't going to explain to him that I already worked out and I was just watching the news before I left, instead I figured I would try to help this pig like man. I always admire an overweight fat person coming to the gym, but when they do 2 min on the stair machine or 4 min on the treadmill then drink a whole gatorade it pisses me off.  When Paul hopped on the treadmill I heard what sounded like stones being dropped into the cup holder. I looked over and saw the unmistakable tootsie rolls my gym strategically leaves scattered around for snacks. Yes my gym has a pizza day and yes it leaves candy in little buckets for people to eat, and if you don't have the will power to avoid these foods at a gym then you are truly fucked. Paul was clearly fucked, but it wasn't until I spoke to him more that he explained his reason for weighing almost 400 lbs, he must have been 5'6" at most and had a nice beard to hide his chin. He took me through a wondrous tale of how he was a college athlete in his younger days and was on course to going to the Olympics, the food Olympics was my first thought. Due to a tragic accident while attempting to skateboard he had twisted his knee and done permanent damage. I skateboarded a little when I was younger and asked if he was trying to do X Y or Z, eventually he explained he had stepped on his nephews board and because of a flaw in the boards design it had caused him to lose his balance and twist his knee. He wanted to sue the company, but decided it wasn't worth the effort. I pressed him as to what the doctor had told him about this life changing injury, he confessed he didn't need to see a doctor because he knew he had to avoid all physical activity until it healed. So was his injury healed now? no, but apparently a real doctor had told him he had prediabetes and that he needed to start exercising A few months would go by, I would see Paul in the gym maybe once a week. At least he was trying? fuck no, let me stop you right fucking there. The only thing this guy was trying to do was pick up high school aged girls and women way the fuck out of his weight category. Not to mention, I don't classify walking on a treadmill for 20min and eating a handful of tootsie rolls as trying to do anything. He also reeked of body odor, sometimes during a run he would chose the treadmill next to me and it was the longest 20min of my life, breathing in his stench I felt I was breathing in the diabetes and it made me want to vomit. I felt particularly bad for one young woman, one day Paul noticed a new girl who was trying to get the stair machine to turn on, it only turns on after you use it for a few seconds but she didn't know. Paul immediately stopped his 20min walk and went over to explain to the girl what was happening, but instead of letting her workout he proceeded to stay with her the entire time. This was all right in front of me so I could hear what he was doing, "I work out almost everyday, I hurt my leg training for a marathon, I used to train for the Olympics I can help you, how come your boyfriend isn't here?, you don't need to exercise you have an amazing sexy body, oh your leaving I'll walk you to your car I'm leaving to". Now this girl was probably 20 years younger, weighed 100lbs at most and was maybe 5' tall. You could tell she was uncomfortable but she was a fucking saint for actually putting up with that shit. I never did see her at the gym again, and it made me realize how shitty it must be for some woman who just want to go exercise in peace only to have some rain cloud like Paul hang around them.  Like any good story this one does have a happy ending for me, not so much for Paul though. One night as Paul was leaving and I was watching him walk to his truck. I forgot to mention he drove a brand new black F150 and liked to park like an idiot taking up two spots or hanging the ass out of the spot making it harder to pull in next to him and fucking up traffic. Anyways for some odd reason he decided he had to jog to his truck but what he didn't see was a patch of black ice. I wish I could say he went flying 20 feet into the air but that would violate the laws of physics. From my point of view he fell backwards and then his foot stopped right underneath him at the end of the ice patch, but the momentum of his 400lb body carried him forward causing him to come crashing down onto his leg which was now directly underneath him. His body came to learn what the law of gravity was, I winced a bit when I was his head bounce off the road. Needless to say I ran outside as did a couple other people who saw what happened, by the time I got there he was just waking up and had begun to cry and moan. I've never seen a grown man cry so much in my life, when someone pointed out his ankle was fucking backwards and bleeding an ambulance was called. Interestingly he wasn't complaining about the fucked up ankle, it was his back that he kept moaning about "my back, my back, I'm paralyzed, I can't breath, my back, I can't breath, I can't breath" clearly he was breathing but he was definitely going into shock. We kept him awake lying to him "it's not that bad, you'll be ok". I wanted to say "you want me to go grab you some tootsie rolls?" but everyone was just trying to keep him calm, this just wasn't the time for jokes.  As they moved him into the ambulance I waved Paul goodbye and told him I'd come visit him in the hospital, but honestly I knew I would never be seeing him and I never did.