The joke was on me

I don't mean to make a big deal out of this. It just happened to be something I experienced today.

The gym that Mrs ERJ and I patronize used to be a grocery store and it was converted into a "health center". It has a physical rehab, cardiac rehab, behavioral health, a walking track, treadmills, conference rooms, locker rooms and showers and a weight-room with free-weights and machines.

The management works diligently to ensure that the community has ownership in the enterprise. One of the things they do is that they invite less-abled people to "train" for Special Olympics. I have seen them with my very own eyes. Most of them were wearing headphones as many of them get squirrelly when they sense they are being watched.

I thought one of them had made his way into the weight-room today. He was slurring his words and talking nonsensically and bobbing his head erratically. I had warm, fuzzy feelings about how inclusive MY gym was. I assumed he had been the victim of severe, closed head-injury and had an IQ of about 55.

And then I heard him speak coherently. Odd! The slurred words and nonsense turned on-and-off.

Then he turned to the girl who was working-out next to him (A saint, to be sure) and he said "Drake".

Then it struck me. Drake is a (c)rap artist. The guy I thought was a moron had been singing along with (c)rap "artists" doing his impressions of how he thought folks in the ghetto sound. I guess he felt a need to culturally enrich us. He was a white-dude, too.

Oddly, I have been in the gym with at least a couple of dozen different folks working out and this is the first time I ran into somebody who felt he needed to share the noise coming out of his ear-buds.

Everybody else has been absolute gems in terms of respecting the space and solitude of other folks in the gym.

I would culturally enrich right back at him with Amazing Grace and The Star Spangled Banner but that would be disrespectful of the other lifters. Alas, I can daydream about the act and have my Walter Mitty moments.