Like most people out there, we tend to have our own personal vernaculars. Phrases that we use, mostly in private, but sometimes out in the wild, which occasionally requires explanation. Most of the time, people scrunch their eyebrows and are dubious about the use of particular phrases, but occasionally others adopt such things, and introduce it into their own vernacular.
I don’t know why, but I’ve often felt the compulsion to write about my use of the general term “overpopulation;” it’s sat in my drafts file as a topic to write about on more than one occasion, but I’ve never actually taken the time to actually write about it. Seeing as how my writing habits have become quite strained throughout the last few weeks and months, mostly due to work trying to suck the ever-living life out of me, I’m always trying to improve my motivation and capability to write, and no matter how bad things get, writing is the one hobby and outlet that I really do not want to let fall too far off the rails, and much like being able to run a mile at any drop of a hat, I always want to be able to write whenever I feel like it.
There are two places in which I most frequently decide that the world is too overpopulated: the parking lot at work, or at the gym.
Being the creature of habit that I am, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that I wish to park in the same parking spot every single day. In order to accomplish that, I realize that I need to pick somewhere that isn’t necessarily rockstar parking, right next to the entrance of the office, but somewhere where I could (hopefully) reliably get the same spot on a regular basis. That being said, my preferred spot is one floor up from the main entrance, but fairly close to the stairs, so I can traverse one flight of stairs and be at the aforementioned rockstar entrance.
For a while, it was pretty nice, getting the same spot on a daily basis. I knew I could be five minutes earlier or five minutes later than the usual arrival time, and it would be there, and I took comfort in knowing that I basically had a consistent place to park.
But then, much to my dismay, I rolled into the parking lot one day, and there was a fucking pickup truck in my spot. It pissed me off royally, and I hoped this was a one-off occurrence. But then the truck was there the next day, and several other days in which I happened to be off by a few minutes. Even after I rattled off a nice little streak of getting my spot back for several consecutive days, this fuckface would still take my exact spot whenever they managed to get there before I did.
To make matters worse, as time progressed, more challengers appeared, and then my B, C, and even fucking D options were starting to get sucked up. And it was always the same scenario; some fuckhead got a new car, and because they were all in their honeymoon phases with their new cars, they didn’t want to park near others, so they looked for off-peak areas to park at, to hope to mitigate parking near others despite the fact that my parking garage literally reaches max capacity every single day. But they all always end up in my little area, much to my disgust.
Its days in which I roll into work, and my area is full of cars in spite of the very early hour in which I arrive, which are overpopulated days. There are simply too many fucking people in existence, and I need them to stop existing so that I can get my usual parking spaces back.
The worst thing though? I’ve identified and found out who the original perpetrator is, the pickup truck guy. Not only do I know who it is, this douchebag also goes to the gym at the same time I do, so we’re basically on the same schedule and I fucking hate him for existing and constantly taking my parking spot. He’s this middle-aged tool who spends more time walking in circles than doing any sort of actual exercise, and he wears backward baseball caps despite the fact that he’s like 50, and those wraparound Bluetooth headphones that prevent him from being able to hear anyone say “excuse me” when he’s watching ESPN instead of exercising.
But now that we’ve gotten to the gym, the gym is also where I decide when the day, and the rest of the world is too fucking overpopulated. And it usually starts in the locker room, when I walk inside, and there’s no fucking rhyme or reason to why I can’t have the same locker on a regular basis. The sheer fact that 90% of the people at my gym have no sense of routine make it impossible for me get the same locker on a regular basis. Plus, my gym’s locker room isn’t that large, so when there are just like 5-6 dudes dressing out, it might as well be Foot Locker on Black Friday, it’s so cramped in there.
Don’t even get me started on whenever I have mornings in which I need to take care of a little bodily functions before I start my workout, and the two fucking stalls in the locker room are both occupied. Whenever this occurs, I want to go Super Saiyan, I’m that enraged by the idea of two choads getting into the stalls before I can.
There are some mornings in which the urge is a little more urgent than others, that I don’t even bother looking for a locker first, I’ll beeline straight to the stalls to try and ensure that I get into one before someone else does to take care of my business. But then there are days in which they’re occupied when I first arrive, and I just know the motherfuckers are sitting there with their goddamn phones and leisurely taking their time, because all while I’m begrudgingly dressing out and preparing myself for the floor, I don’t hear any doors, any flushes or any sounds to indicate that they’re done.
These are mornings in which the world is undoubtedly too overpopulated, and I need some assholes to not exist, so that I can take care of business at my own leisure.
And then when I get onto the gym floor, I have fairly consistent routines that I like to rotate around and mix up, but they’re still fairly predictable to me. Occasionally, there will be cardio days in which every single one of the 14 treadmills are taken, on days in which I planned on running. And the worst part, they’re being used by some weak-ass fucks who are just doing some pussy-ass warm-up runs, when I’m mentally prepared to do some actual distance training.
Or there will be days in which every single bench and/or squat rack is being used, at 6-7 in the morning, and I’m simply flabbergasted at the sheer number of people who have to exist at the same time in which I’m trying to get my morning swole on. Yeah, if these people could just stop existing, at least until like 8 am, that would be great.
In the absolute worst-case scenarios of them all though, are the occasional days in which there are too many people in the parking lot and the gym occur, and this is basically where all thoughts of the world being overpopulated really stemmed from. I roll into the parking garage to find all my go-to parking spots all taken. And then I go to the gym, only to find out I can’t go to the bathroom because everything is taken, and there are no good lockers left. And then I get on the floor, and there are bunch of pussies doing lame white people workouts clogging up my entire path of routine.
It’s days like this, that if I were Thanos, or had possession of the Infinity Gauntlet, I would snap my fingers without any fucking hesitation, and watch with great satisfaction and glee as all these goddamn people disintegrated into dust, and let me have some goddamn space. I just re-watched Endgame too recently, and as a fan of the original comic Infinity saga, I have to say Thanos really was onto something, what with identifying originally just how overpopulated the galaxy really was.
