If I had to name one single thing that I missed about my life in New York, it would be my wonderful New York gym. It was just a few blocks from our apartment, loaded with all of the newest and nicest equipment, and basically always empty. Sure, the completely saturated workout facility market in New York must be tough on the owners, but it worked in our favor. I am told that John Travolta worked out at our gym, though I never saw him there and although it doesn’t seem like he spends a lot of time on the treadmill. In any case, it was nice.
Our new gym in Missoula is located in a strip mall, has some working equipment, and is populated by the same five guys who are always standing around not quite lifting anything. I mean, it’s not so bad. Part of the issue is that I’ve been having knee problems the last few months and I’m stuck on the stationary bike a lot, something that Ben describes as only being marginally better exercise than sitting on the couch. Worse, though, is that the stationary bikes at this gym have the following written on them:
“Stop exercising if you feel pain, faint, dizzy, or out of breath.”
Yeah. I know. A parallel structure nightmare. And I have to stare at it for 30 minutes a day. It’s like driving by a flaming seven-vehicle car crash that you can’t help but stare at, except that it’s with nouns and adjectives. It’s a word crash.
Now, I’m not a grammar expert by any stretch of the imagination, but this sentence follows me through the day like a terrible parallel structure ghost, shaking its chains and turning my blood cold with its crappy sentence balance. Whenever I’ve made a list in my head lately, it sounds something like:
“I need to mail those thank-you notes, buy some silverware, and pain.”
Or:
“Today I’m writing two press releases, some brochure copy, out of breath, and two web pages.”
I also often imagine a terrifying world in which people talked like that and it went totally unnoticed. For example, I might imagine a man sitting in a doctor’s office and explaining that his symptoms make him feel “faint and pain.” Or I think about two joggers finishing up a marathon, where one of them turns and says, “I’m dizzy,” and the other one says, “I’m pain.”
If you are thinking, “why don’t you just look somewhere other than the tiny 8-point font grammar mistake written on the bike, like maybe, for instance, at the TV directly in front of the bike? Or even the wall?” then I don’t think we’ll ever truly understand one another.
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July 30, 2008 at 11:14 pm
Rachel
OH my god, the English major in me can not stop LOLing!
July 31, 2008 at 12:37 am
Fred
I feel hungry and texture.
July 31, 2008 at 2:58 am
Hilary
Sorry to hear your gym experience is taking a step down.
Now for grammar nerdity: you can actually feel all of those things, however. Really the only one screwing up your sense of parallel structure is pain (the noun), right? It would have been better in that sense to use pained, but then the writer in you must agree that isn’t quite right either.
I find this mistake of a lower rung than the “liberal” “sprinkling” of “quotation” marks, you’re vs. your, or their vs. there errors that are far more frequent.
I still feel you, however. My gym has a large bell hand-marked “fire arlarm” — it gets me every time.
July 31, 2008 at 8:22 am
dmw
No grammarian here either, but I agree with Hilary. The pain is the problem. So how do we fix this? “Stop if you begin to feel funny.” “Stop if you feel this exercise is causing you pain, if you are experiencing shortness of breath, if you feel as though you may faint, or if the room is swirling.” Oh, hell, just stay of the bike!
Two entries in as many days!! What’s next?
July 31, 2008 at 8:23 am
dmw
That would be “OFF the bike”!
July 31, 2008 at 8:51 am
April
Pain, Faint, and Dizzy sound like the names of three additional, illegitimate dwarves.
July 31, 2008 at 9:06 am
eema
Put your towel over it!
July 31, 2008 at 10:03 am
sarah
hilary - yes, PAIN is the big problem, and the sentence would read fine without it. i guess it’s an even stranger case of parallel structure to me because the one that doesn’t fit comes at the beginning, when usually with these cases the one that doesn’t fit comes at the end. I think “pained” would still bother me… it isn’t quite right either - in fact, it sets off a few minor grammar “arlarms.”
april, fred, and eema - HA!
July 31, 2008 at 2:12 pm
tertio
I am not even gonna try.
July 31, 2008 at 3:37 pm
Your brother
Is this really wrong?
Could you not re-write it as, “Stop excercising if you feel pain, feel faint, feel dizzy, or feel out of breath.”?
I think its legit, grammar nazi.
July 31, 2008 at 4:48 pm
sarah
mike (my brother) -
ask yourself this: would anyone ever say, “After I fell, I felt pain and dizzy”?
A robot might, but not a human. Or look at Fred’s example above: “I feel hungry and texture.” You can feel both things, but you would never pair them together because the word FEEL itself can be used in two different ways.
…and i might take offense of your use of “its”!
July 31, 2008 at 9:43 pm
repenttokyo
don’t get down about riding an exercise bike - it is perfectly acceptable cardio activity, particularly at high resistance.
August 6, 2008 at 4:52 pm
darwin duck
Heh. The elevator in my building had a notice on it: “For an emergency, dial [number].” I sometimes felt like calling and asking for an emergency…but I probably would have gotten in trouble, especially if I had backed it up with: “Then there’s a wording emergency here, morons.”
September 29, 2008 at 11:44 pm
Sarah B.
This is known as a syllepsis, not a word crash!
A syllepsis is “a particular type of zeugma in which the clauses are not parallel either in meaning or grammar. The governing word may change meaning with respect to the other words it modifies. This creates a semantic incongruity which is often humorous. Alternatively, a syllepsis may contain a governing word or phrase which does not agree grammatically with one or more of its distributed terms. This is an intentional construction bending the rules of grammar for stylistic effect.” (Wikipedia: Zeugma)
I saw the definition in a novel and thought about your post, how maybe it would help you get back on track on your workouts if you had a name for the grammatical adventure before you, and pain!