Fitness Center Puns

As we drove down the highway we passed a bunch of fire trucks all parked directly outside of a fitness center. My dad taps me on the shoulder, I turn to look at him, and he says:

"I guess somebody must have burned too many calories"

So a little back story, I work at a fitness center as a lifeguard. I'm on a pretty friendly basis with a lot of the regulars because the same group usually comes and swim laps around the same time. I usually like to joke with them as they come in, catch up, comment on new swim suits or haircuts or whatever.

Anyway the joke, so a woman comes in wearing a new blue suit with black trim.

I threw my hands up in the air and ask from across the pool, "oh no! Did you get into a fight??"

When she looked at me confused, I then followed up with "You're all black and blue!"

Her audible groan couldn't have been more perfectly timed.

We had a good laugh after that though.

John Deavensmit was not having a good time. After an incident involving a coffee spill, he'd been sued for $50 million, and somehow the jury had ruled against him. There was no way he could pay that much money; he'd go bankrupt.

Naturally, he filed for an appeal, but the winner of the case was already beginning to hound him for money, hoping to get at least something before the judgement was overturned. John was nearly at his wit's end before he found an unusual package in his mailbox.

It was from a couple of his friends, who all went on to law school when John left to create a startup. They'd all been very successful, and had gone on to be justices at various levels, from courts in a small county in Wisconsin all the way to the Supreme Court. When he opened it up, he was surprised to see an ink drawing of a thick wooden stick. It was signed by his friends, and accompanied by a note:

> Hey John, > > We're sorry to hear about your loss in court last month. We met up at a judge conference in the Davison Center, and we thought that we'd do something special for you. We met up in the Grapefruit Room and all worked together to draw this. We hope you enjoy it! > > Your friends

Now, John had been to D.C. a few times, and knew about the Davison Centre. It was renowned for its very offbeat architecture. The Grapefruit Room was one of the weirdest: it had been constructed by taking a world-record grapefruit, carving out the flesh, and preserving the rind. The result was a walk-in fruit, and it always smelled of citrus.

It took John a while to work out the significance of the gift, but when he realized it, he was overjoyed. His good friends had seen fit to grant him a stave judge-men penned in a peel.

My friend had a really interesting job. One of those jobs you didn't know people could get.

tl;dr just read it, it's worth reading the whole description of the job

Before I moved, my neighbor's job was based in Antarctica. He worked with one of the research centers there, and his job was standing up penguins. I kid you not — when shipments arrived by air, like by helicopter or by airplane or whatever, the penguins would all look up with their tiny heads and look up so high they would fall over backwards. Now, penguins are super awkward in how they waddle everywhere, and so, not wanting to disturb the local environment, the research station had to have someone that could suit up and go out there and stand up penguins.

As soon as every shipment arrived, he would say, "Welp, better go suit up now," get into the whole penguin suit, and waddle out there all incognito and stand the penguins on their feet again. I'm sure they could have done it on their own, eventually, but the idea was to disturb the animals for as little time as possible.

I thought it was the most ridiculous thing when he told me, but he got the job through his dad's researcher colleague. Basically, the deal was they would get people to go down for 3-month periods (I think he ended up doing 6 months) and this was his occupation for that time. Actually, is plane flight there was one of the really cool parts: LA went to Sydney, which then went back across the Pacific to Buenos Aires. Then, on the final leg, he would finally go Buenos Aires to the research station. The planes actually had to be specially fitted for the job, though — Of course, you can't have typical runways in Antarctica because they'd get ice all over them and there'd be all these problems — so the planes had to have mechanics on board each flight who would, mid-flight, switch out the take-off wheels for the landing skis. Just like a sea plane, except it was a snow-plane. Coolest thing ever.

Oh, but the way he described working with the penguins was the best! Most of the time he'd just go out and stand them up, but sometimes one would hurt itself. Like one time one of them fell over backwards and hit its foot the wrong way, so he had to not only pick it up, but give medical help, too. He seriously had to prop up the penguin, take off his glove, and pull on each of the penguins little webbed toes, pull on their legs. Sort of like how I'm pulling your leg right now.