Doctor Who comes to call. At the gym.

So I've started watching Doctor Who.

I guess that puts me in the dorky-but-totally-cool 'in' crowd, right?

I usually spend my cardio time at the gym listening to an audiobook I download from the library, but as I wait ever so long for the next Harry Potter book to become available I've been making do with books that don't even come close to sparking the kind of interest that Mr. Potter and all the Wizards do.

I know, I'm a little late to the whole Harry Potter Craze, but at least I'm here now.  Don't judge me.  I spent most of that time when I could have been enjoying learning about Quiddich and Muggles turning down my nose at THOSE BOOKS and considering them to be beneath my "I only read literature' persona that I'd convinced myself was true.

I was an absolute joy, of course.

It's hard work being this alternative. 
Note the battered guitar case, the long
denim shirt, the little makeup ...

Actually, it's not that I didn't read other books that weren't assigned by my English professors - I did.  It's just that for many of my younger years I thought that the only right way to be was outside of the status quo.  I wasn't going to read those intensely popular books precisely because they were popular.  The same thing applied to other aspects of my life - I didn't like popular music.  Or I didn't want anyone to know that I liked some popular music.  Whenever I was driving and heard the song "Livin' La Vida Loca" (oh - you know you can still sing all the words) I would listen to it and sing along, but also be terrified that I would crash and the people who came to help me would hear that song playing on the radio and judge me and find me incredibly unhip.  It was always a bit of a relief when the song was over and I could switch the station back to something I considered subversive and cool.  Like classic rock.

My teenage years were mentally exhausting.

I couldn't find the senior portrait I wanted, which was black
and white and included a black turtleneck and an old
camera, so I'm giving you this self-portrait instead. Laugh
amongst yourselves.

So I never read the Potter books, until now.  And I love them.  I'm completely hooked.  I'll listen to them with one headphone in my ear while I clean and take care of my children - half listening to whatever they are mumbling on about.  (But not really - my kids talk nonstop.  I have to tune some of it out.)

I'll listen to them when I'm trying to force Adele to take a nap by rocking her to sleep because we all know that if she doesn't take a nap then the afternoon will go to hell in the form of yelling and spitting of food and kicking.  Thus the books keep me distracted and calm.  We all win.


And most enjoyable of all - I listen to the books at the gym.  But because of a weird glitch I've been waiting an extra long time for The Order of the Phoenix.

And it's horrible, the waiting.  It's filled with depressing books that I have to stop a third of the way in because I'm trying to use them to get me energized to exercise, and listening to a story about a woman who has lost all of her family and is about to be swindled by some stranger is not my idea of energizing.  And then there's the cliche-filled book about wives getting even with their husbands for cheating - which I thought would be light and funny but in the end became annoying and just plain boring.

And so I've given up the books for now - until the next Harry Potter one, of course.

I'm much less annoyed and don't roll my eyes anymore while I'm working out, which can be a little disconcerting to see someone do multiple times in the gym, I'm assuming.  They probably think I'm having a seizure, much like the time another mother told the daycare workers that they thought Adele was having a seizure because she crossed her eyes.  (Did I tell you that story?  If I didn't then let me assure you that there was no seizure.  She just crossed her eyes.  The end.)

I don't know why I didn't think of watching Netflix on my phone before now.  It seems like the perfect solution.  I've often thought that if there was just something interesting on television at the gym my workout would be much easier.  Because there's only so much Fox News that I can handle watching - evening if I'm not listening to it.  I can just tell by their facial expressions that they are being extremely biased assholes.  (Yes, I totally see the irony in me being a biased asshole by putting down all of Fox News.  But COME ON.  They allowed Glen Beck to happen.)

So back to Doctor Who.  Remember when I brought it up many, many words ago?  I've been hearing a lot about it in the last couple of years.  So I thought, why not?  And I like it.  I don't love it yet, but I'm only three shows in so I have faith that our relationship will blossom and I will finally be a part of the group.  It's like, now everything is ironic and what's dorky is dorky in the best way possible.

The Doctor

We can all embrace ourselves and our love of science fiction without everyone thinking we live in our parents' basement and eat pizza and stare at a computer screen playing World of Warcraft into all hours of the night.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Guys.  I'm finally cool for not being cool.

It's what I've waited my whole life for.