MATURE FEAR? WHAT HAPPENS IN THE SAUNA STAYS IN THE SAUNA

Wouldn’t you expect old fears to subside instead of growing a new crop of mature fear?

Well, guess again, pilgrim. Be afraid, but not paralyzed by fear. It’s a fine line. How fine?

So, there I was, nervously standing in the one hundred eighty degree sauna in my usual sauna drag:

Four layers of sweat gear under a rain gear shell.

My gym rat routine was do a little cardio, lift the push or pull day routine, then stretch it out in the heater. I wore the layers so I wouldn’t fat-shame myself. ‘You’re not fat, it’s the layers.’

The layers held the heat and the rain gear didn’t leak through. I could spend less time in the sauna and keep a good sweat cooking without leaving a trail.

Again, I’m in the sauna doing wall sits across from the benches beside the fenced off heating element. I’m getting ready to leave. My purple face feels like it might explode. My hair is fried.

There’s room enough for maybe fifteen people in the sauna. That night it held eight or nine. I noticed a man sitting on the top bench opposite me when I went in.

While I did my normal stretch routine from shoulders to hips to hammies, the guy started copying me. I didn’t act like I noticed, except for his eyes. Throughout his stretching he gave me the stink-eye.

I continued my routine from shoulders to hips, and he stood up. I noticed that he was flexible, real flexible, show-off flexible, and he did. While giving me the stink-eye death stare. I smiled in his direction.

Mature Fear For The Fearless

I’m not a mature fear geiger-counter, but I felt hostility radiating off the other sauna stretcher, especially when it started looking like a martial arts warm-up.

At six three, two sixty at the time, I gauged what might happen in a surprise sauna melee while I was on the verge of passing out, which was usually my internal signal to finish up. I also factored in my sixty-plus years.

All the calculations added up to my usual conclusion: I could take him.

I would have left if not for the one person who noticed the Stretch Off In The Sauna. Of the eight or nine in the sauna, one of them was a twenty-something year old woman in a string bikini. I’m the old guy wrapped up like the Michelin Man, and she’s barely covered, but in the sauna we all ignore each other equally.

Except for that one guy, now her.

The lady starts mimicking the guy’s stretching, but doing it better than him. And she’s giving him the same eye he’d been giving me. It turned into a competition. Now I couldn’t leave.

He stood to do leg stretches that showed gymnast’s training; she stood on the first bench on the wall facing the door and did stretches that showed ballet training.

It ended when he raised he steadied himself and pulled his leg above his shoulder. She watched him do his other leg, then walked down the bench toward my wall sit spot.

She had a look of resignation, like she expected better from the other guy. I feel stuck to the wall. We smile at each other and both look at the other guy.

I’m looking at him and notice movement on my left periphery. When I turn my head I’m a shoulder width away from the standing position two ballet stretch on the right side of the top image.

With one foot on the bench, the other on the ceiling, hands free, the lady looks at the guy on the other side of the sauna with a dramatic arm flourish that said, ‘You lose.’

I took the same bow on my way out the door, at least the arm waving part. My mature fear had transferred from what seemed like a volatile guy, to what I’d say to my wife if she saw a picture of me and the ballerina workout.

“Honey, it’s the sauna. You’ve seen it. Things get overheated in there.”