The Walking Dead 4

In Vancouver, everyone seems obsessed with fitness. Even me. I try to exercise every day, walk a lot, use the stairs (71) watch my diet ((within reason) and try not to get too fat, all within reasonable limits of course. I refuse to buy into the collective self-hatred behind all this health and wellness mania, and that means that I don't eat kale, that I don't cleanse or detox nor do anything else that involves worshiping at the altar of Gwyneth Paltrow. God gave us a liver. That works fine. Okay, all you natural selectionists, Evolution (which is just your name for God) gave me a liver. Whatever! So, throughout Vancouver, especially in the better-off neighbourhoods, you will see scores of people punishing themselves with jogging and gym and yoga and what have you. Don't ask them if they enjoy it. They will look at you funny. For that matter, don't even ask me, because I also have to do my part to keep my carcass in operative form, if not in peak condition. But here, I digress, Gentle Reader. It is the way that so many of us do fitness that to me makes them Walking Dead. Joggers on sidewalks for example have long been my bête noir. It is their intentional obliviousness to all the lesser mortals with whom they have to share the pavement, and they're also pretty bad on forest trails, where they seem absolutely oblivious to some people's need for peace, privacy and personal space while contemplating the natural splendour that we are part of. I used to get really offended with those idiots and sometimes there has been conflict. Now I just try to laugh it off. it is actually quite funny, seeing those adults dressed to look ridiculous in their dear little running togs while looking oh so serious and macho (the women too!) about how totally Jonny or Jane Fitness, and don't I look great and fit, and here I am faithfully worshiping at the altar of fitness, wellness and eternal youth and beauty, and oh aren't I just the most special thing in the universe right now! Or they are so busy hyperventilating that you just hope that someone is going to have a portable defibrillator nearby. Or maybe it's time for me to brush up on my first aid and CPR, even if in my really nasty moments I might think it better to let some of those narcissists just put themselves out of their misery. And don't get me started about bicycle jocks (jerks misspelled), who ride at maximum speed, ridiculously trussed up in spandex drag bearing advertising logos, and yelling at each other in hockey star shouts as they speed along the pavement. As long as they stay off the damn sidewalk. But really, I no longer have the energy to get mad at any of those idiots. One of the features of Zombie Nation is the lack of humour and joy. And miserable old men like me are just as much Walking Dead as the rest of them. But now, I`m changing my tactic. The Lance Armstrong wannabes in their usually unflattering bike drag (spandex is not a right, it is a privilege!), deserve only to be laughed at, but not too derisively. They at least have left their luxury cars at home and are now polluting a little bit less, though the air might be even cleaner if they would also keep their mouths shut, but at least they`re happy little bike jocks. And they look so funny and ridiculous, especially the way they seem to take themselves so seriously, well, who wouldn`t only laugh, but even feel a certain detached and not really smarmy affection for them? Rather like big little kids with excessive testosterone. Should I encounter them on the sidewalk, though these ones usually seem to know better, I simply smile and tell them, "Oh, silly me, here I am, walking on the bike bath again!" and most of them seem to get the joke and smile or even laugh a little. Lately, to joggers almost knocking me over on the sidewalk, I just smile now and say, "Burn rubber! One young guy actually burst out laughing, and I also smiled. A jogger with a sense of humour! We are all so very much cut off and divided from one another, which is a citizen requirement of Zombie Nation. The most subversive act is in trying, through humour and good will, to cut across the lines and try to decrease the mutual isolation. Revolution of neighbourliness. Kumbaya, anybody?