How I lost faith in humanity … and my short term memory

It took me 10 months after the birth of my daughter, but I’ve finally managed to return to a weekly workout regimen, albeit to a limited extent. There’s a great gym at work, which is small but functional, and one which I try to visit twice a week during my lunch break. This gym has free weights, treadmills, machines, showers – the works. So to take advantage of this facility, and free up time in the evenings, I’ve taken to bringing gym clothes, a towel, and miscellaneous toiletries with me in the mornings. Except that I keep forgetting the gym bag that contains these items on the train into work.

Apparently there is a Lost and Found process in place to recover items left behind by passengers, but I have yet to see it work. First, you have to rely on the honesty of fellow passengers and the train conductors to not make off with whatever you’ve left behind. Second, you have to wait a day before misplaced items are collected together and sent back to downtown Chicago for storage in the Lost and Found office. Finally, you have to navigate the world’s most arcane office hours to contact someone at this office to figure out if your article has been located. Below is a picture of the hours that the Lost and Found office is actually open:

Of interest is the fact that the office is not open before 8am and after 5pm, and is not open on weekends or holidays. 90% of the passengers on the train have to be office workers, some of whom are leaving the city to get to far-flung suburbs for work (i.e., yours truly). How we are expected to make it back to the city before the office closes is beyond me, unless I have the gall to walk into my boss’s office and say I need to leave work over an hour early because I need to find a missing gym bag.

Of even greater interest is the set of random times that the office remains closed: 9am- 9:30am, 11am-11:15am, 1pm-2pm, and then 3:15-3:55pm. What the hell are these? Bathroom breaks? Union mandated smoking breaks? Why do you randomly need a 30 minute break, then a 15 minute break, then an hour break, and then, bizarrely, a 40 minute break at the end of the day? WTF?! Every time I’m between meetings at work, or have 5 minutes to myself, I’ll reach for the phone to see if I can call the Lost and Found office … until I realize that the office is not open.

The rare instances where I’ve gotten through to someone, I’ve been told that nothing matching my description has showed up. Why? Who wants my old gym clothes? This is the second time I’ve lost a gym bag – the first time I lost the shoes in which I ran the Chicago marathon. They were old, but nice. The second time I lost the second pair of shoes I bought to replace the first pair. These were not old at all, and were nice. Who looks inside a gym bag and says, “Cool – size 12 ½ Mizuno shoes for medium pronators with a large toe box. Just what I needed!” And both times the gym bag was nice – the second time it happened to be a bag I had received as part of a recognition award at IBM. Why people, why?! Why are you walking away with my stuff and not turning it in? I’d understand if I’d misplaced an iPhone. I’d know better than to expect a return of something like that. But gym bags with sweaty clothes and used shoes? Really?

I’m losing faith in my short term memory, and fast. But I’m losing faith in humanity faster. Give me back my gym clothes!

Soft hands

I suffer from a frustrating inability to get my hair cut regularly. My work hours and long commute mean that most places are closed by the time I get home on weekdays, and weekends are so busy that I just try to find the closest, cheapest hair salon to where I’m running errands. So it was a pleasant surprise to receive a coupon in the mail for Halo for Men, billed as a “hip and relaxing environment where men could comfortably enjoy salon and spa services.” The salon and spa services weren’t what I cared for - it was the fact that they had just opened a location in the very train station that I use daily, and that this location offered hours that worked for me.

The coupon itself was for a set of services called “the Man”, which included a “Signature Haircut & style, Shampoo & conditioning treatment, Scalp massage, Paraffin hand wax, Hand massage, Hot towel & facial toner, Cleanup shampoo after the man, Free touch-up within two weeks of previous appointment, and Complimentary beverage.” [the crazy capitalization is all theirs]. Although I needed only the haircut, the coupon was $25 for $45 worth of services. Nice.

However, this statement on their website troubled me – the salon was designed to be a “sophisticated yet modest environment where men could go to comfortably enjoy luxurious salon services without worrying about feeling out of place or being gawked at, like at other female-dominated salons and spas." Not sure about you men out there, but the only time I get gawked at when I go get a haircut is when I’ve gone two months without trimming things, and I look like a Chia Pet Head on steroids. And how could you be “manly” in a salon? I had trouble reconciling this – I pictured a place where macho men laughed loudly at lewd jokes and downed beverages in one gulp and watched an Ultimate Fighting Championship match on flat screen TVs, while … getting pedicures?

But I made my appointment anyway and showed up at the place last Friday. I received a friendly greeting and was ushered inside to a room with an industrial design. There was music playing over speakers – music that had a lot of guitar riffs in it, so I figured that made it manly. And there were flat screen TVs on every wall, but instead of playing Ultimate Fighting, they were playing “Goodwill Hunting.” Hmm, I thought. This isn’t too bad.

I was offered a beverage, and chose a simple bottle of water. Appropriately hydrated, I was led over to a small tub at waist level, asked to roll up my sleeves and then dip my hands in hot paraffin. “Umm, what is this for?” I asked meekly. “To moisturize and soften up your hands,” came the answer. Duh.

Gloves were quickly slipped on, and with the paraffin slowly congealing, I was led into my chair. On the TV, Matt Damon was solving crazy math equations while MIT professors looked on in awe. Suddenly, my vision was obscured – a hot towel had appeared out of nowhere and was firmly wrapped around my face. I started to resist, but lost my resolve as the warmth from the scented towel caused my facial muscles to relax. Mmm, this is good, I thought.

Gloves were taken off my hands, and the paraffin peeled away. Are my hands softer? I wondered. I had no time to answer, because a hand massage immediately ensued. Mmm. This is REALLY good. 
With the massage done, the towel off my face, and Matt Damon on screen again, the haircut finally commenced.

“How much hair would you like taken off?”

I was confused. The people at Supercuts usually just slapped a guard onto a clipper and buzzed the same amount off from all over my head.
My hairdresser sighed knowingly, and proceeded to go to work. Snips here, there, everywhere. Locks of hair fell from my head in small bunches. Ben Affleck and Matt Damon got into an argument. Then my hairdresser paused.

“Who cuts your hair?” she asked.
I had no answer. Lots of people cut my hair. A different person cut my hair each time. I believed in presenting an equal opportunity head of hair for everyone.

“They’ve got your hair at all different lengths,” she said when I didn’t respond.

Huh, I thought. Interesting.
And so it went. She would ask me a question, or make a statement, and I would have no answer for her, and she would go about fixing things. And fix she did, because by the time we were done, I looked good. That’s right, I looked Matt Damon good. And I felt bad-ass. Jason Bourne bad-ass. Because my hair looked good and my hands were soft and my facial muscles were all relaxed.

I walked out of Halo for Men thinking that I would have to find a way in my budget to make this happen again soon. The train station was crowded, it being Friday, but I walked confidently through, daring anyone to get in my way or threaten me in any way. Because with my new haircut I had gained the ability to pull Jason Bourne moves on my assailants and leave them broken on the floor.

And as they lay there defeated they would think, “Damn that guy kicked my ass. But he had the softest hands…”