Elephants and ice cream sundaes

"Bad news," the Hero said. "We're not lifting enough elephants at the gym."


He was looking at the latest report from our local Y, where we have been faithfully working out once a week for, oh, at LEAST the last two weeks.


The report tells us, among other important things, how much weight we have lifted in terms of elephants. Usually this is in the neighborhood of .04, .1 elephants -- equivalent to maybe a tooth. However, WE have apparently been slacking in the weight-lifting department, logging only .02 elephant.


As dismaying as this news was, I was more concerned about the fact that, according to the report, we have earned 0.0 ice cream sundaes. Of course it takes a great deal of effort to earn a fraction of a sundae, but SURELY I have at least earned a cherry by now. Maybe just the cherry stem. But SOMETHING.


The report is also useful for keeping track of how long you have used the cardio machines, such as the stationary bike and the treadmill. ("The treadmill was in operation for 30 minutes and 24 seconds. However, no motion was detected on it. User is suspected of stepping off and letting it run while she napped on the floor mat next to it.")


It would be helpful if there were some sort of image to help us visualize how far we'd run or biked, like the elephants for how much weight you lift. It would be exhilarating to know, for example, that "You ran from the White House in Washington, DC, to George's Mount Vernon estate," although if this showed up on MY report, it would NOT be exhilarating because it would indicate that I had been grossly confused with someone else. My report would be more like "You ran from The Bakery Shoppe at 143 22nd St. to Nora's Ice Cream Store at 145 22nd St. (and we suspect that you walked part of the way)."


The report also notes your Lifetime Fitness Points. My Lifetime Fitness Points are somewhere in the neighborhood of 113. I have no idea what this means, but to reach the First Level of Fitness probably requires around 14,897 points. I have been secretly inquiring into whether one can buy extra fitness points, but have thus far been unable to obtain any information on this. Perhaps some sort of barter system could be worked out, where I could get someone else's points in exchange for, well, I don't know what. This is probably why the barter system is not too popular at the Y.


If neither of these strategies is successful, I might have to resort to turning on a bunch of treadmills at the same time, when the gym is not too crowded. I will log in with my code number on all of them and hope that the system will not notice there is nobody on them. It will cut into my napping-on-the-mat time, but sometimes you gotta make sacrifices.


I suppose I COULD just exercise more...wait, is that an elephant I hear laughing?