Ottawa Invaders

By Jeff “Footloose” Morris

I’ve learned a lot about working out this year. In fact, with the help of Emilio Ruiz, the former Emerald Links golf course chef and body builder who is a personal trainer at the St. Laurent Good Life, I am not the same person I was a year ago.

Emilio spent the winter helping me get ready for Year 2 of my semi-pro football comeback with the Ottawa Invaders. I can hear his words, “The warrior is sharpening his spear. Zzzzt. Zzzzt. Zzzzzt.”

Emilio is a world class body builder with a body fat percentage under five. He will be Mr. Ottawa this year. I am a punter. I’m 48. My body fat percentage is over 20. I’ll be strapping it up and sharing a football field with kids half my age, fresh out of CIS football and some just off CFL try-outs. Their spears are sharp. Mine is, well, I don’t really have one. I got pancaked a couple of times last year. I’m surprised no one told me I look like Betty White out there. We’re about the same age.

After our sets of Russian boxers, 200s, Spider-Mans, planks, and muscle-ripping sets of work on the quads, I like to unwind. I like to have a sauna and just chill – okay, bad choice of words – for 10 or 15 minutes.

Depending on the circumstances in the men’s changeroom, the sauna can be the most difficult, painful and enduring part of the workout.

Let me explain.

A few weeks ago, I was sitting in the sauna by myself. I’m almost always the only one in there. It’s a perfect way to detox both physically and mentally after working out.

And then, the door opened. A whoosh of cool air Niagara Falls’d its way into the sauna, followed by Eric. I only know his name was Eric because he had his name written on his plastic water bottle with a Sharpie.

My OCD tendencies always push me to the top corner of the sauna area. I only thought it would be natural, then, that Eric would sit as mathematically far away from me in the sauna as possible. Sit against the other wall, and maybe sit at the lower level. If I’m Maine, he can be San Diego.

But Eric didn’t do that. He sat beside me. Not right beside me, but maybe halfway to the other wall. I’m in a sauna, I’m naked except for the towel wrapped around my waist. I am dripping sweat. So, Eric, um, how about some space, dude?

I tried not to pay attention to him, but it was clearly my space and my experience he was violating.

I turned my head very slightly and rolled my eyes over and saw him unfolding a section of the National Post. Really, Eric? Do you have to read in here, and shake each page as you turn it? Can it not wait for 12 minutes?

I started to think about how much this guy was getting on my nerves. Then I got thinking that I was being totally ridiculous. What gives me the right to judge and to be unnerved by this guy simply because he wants to have a sauna, and because he planned ahead to bring a newspaper and a water bottle in there with him?

I was just starting to feel guilty, when Eric did the unthinkable. He tried to strike up a conversation with me.

If you think it’s wrong for me to be intolerant of that or to feel violated by that, just remember for a minute that I’m tired, I’m sweating, I’m naked, I’m sitting on a wooden bench that is hotter than the surface of the planet Mercury, and I don’t feel like chatting with a pale little chubby guy with a newspaper.

“So, did you have a good workout today?”

I sort of grunted.

“Sure is great to see the end of Old Man Winter. Yup. Won’t be long now ‘til we’re out in the boat and at the cottage.”

I kind of glanced at him with a quarter smile and nodded. He seemed to be reading while he was chatting – Eric the Naked Sweaty Multi-Tasker – and he obviously wasn’t reading a self help column with a title like, oh, let’s say ‘Tips on how not to violate the personal space of the guy four feet away from you when you are both naked in the sauna.’

He wasn’t through trying to bond, and he played the card every guy will bite on in his quest for conversation.

“So,” he said in a shmarmy tone. “The playoffs are off to a good start, eh?”

I was tempted to spout off on poor officiating or tap into my inner Don Cherry. But I refrained. I got up, sweaty, naked and nasty, and gave an obligatory nod to my new BFF Eric and pulled the rip cord. I made a bee line for the shower. I turned on the hot water, pulled the curtain in my stall shut, and enjoyed a newfound personal space with hot serenity cascading onto my body from my new ally, the shower head.

As I dried off and changed, I kept looking for Eric, wanting to maintain a cavernous personal space.  Eventually, Eric went away. He got in his Accura and he drove off to Eric Land, a place where he can put on his Lulu Lemon man pants and his man Crocs and pull his newspaper out of his satchel and maybe listen to his Lionel Ritchie CDs.

I’ll be sharpening my spear.

Zzzzt. Zzzzt. Zzzzt.