Induction

He eyed me almost disdainfully.


"If I could ask you to just sit here a minute and fill out these forms. Just let me know when you're done". He swaggered off. He didn't even have to try to look nonchalant. He wasn't remotely attractive (certainly not my type) but something about his sinewy poise and movement just oozed fitness. You couldn't help but watch and admire.


I sat on the swivel-chair in the corner feeling small and inexperienced. I was, as they say, out of my comfort zone. In so many ways. This was not my world and I wasn't entirely sure I wanted to be a part of it. But it was too late now. I had come in and I had sat down. I had a questionnaire, for God's sake! Why didn't they make it easy?


I answered all the relevant questions, many of which made me squirm. There was something self-flagellatory in the manner in which I forced myself to answer questions at which other people would surely draw the line... Age, weight, reasons for putting myself through this humiliation.


Occasionally, I glanced up from my test to see minuscule young things in even smaller garments barely breaking a sweat on machines that would surely have been better located in a dank dungeon somewhere. This must be hell. I must, voluntarily, have mosied on into hell. What is more, I was actually going to pay them to torture me. And. AND, I was going to pay extra for them to devise a particular routine of suffering especially for me!

I was no stranger to humiliation. After all, you only have to get pregnant to qualify for large doses of it at the hands of anyone wearing a health professional's badge. And I had managed that four times.

Is it right to prefer to give birth naked in a roomful of people you don't know than to join a gym?