Video Chat: The New P90X

I went to my local YMCA today to play some basketball. The court is small, but well kept and at 2 pm there is almost never anybody using it. When I got there, I walked into the court, laced up my shoes, and started to shoot. About five minutes into my shoot-around a woman came in holding a toddler in her arms, with another child (probably 4 or 5 years old) waddling behind her. The woman was heavy set and dressed in workout clothes that were not quite big enough to hold her frame. She sat down on the bench and the toddler and the older child started running around and trying to play basketball. I expected her to go out to the other area of the gym to workout and leave her kids in the gym unsupervised like every other parent at the Y does. Like I'm going to do when I'm a parent because what better way to get some time to yourself? But no. As she sat down the woman reached into her bag and pulled out her laptop. "Okay," I thought, "Maybe she has some work to do, I can understand that." Wrong. A couple minutes passed and I heard the familiar start-up sound of Skype. Shortly afterward I heard the woman start to have a loud conversation with another woman about how stressful her day had been. The woman was Skyping in the gym while her kids ran around. Are you kidding me? Why even bother putting on workout clothes, getting your kids in the car, and driving to the Y if all your going to do at there is have a video conference with another woman and complain the whole time about how tired you are? It took all of my energy not to run over, slam her laptop shut, and take her children to child services because obviously the woman has problems. If you can't stay out of contact with the outside world for more than 10 minutes while you're at the gym, you have a problem. I feel bad for her kids, it looked like they were expecting to have some play time with their mother. Instead they got to run around while their mom paid attention to her computer screen and not them. I left before they did, I hope to God she eventually got off her lazy behind and spent some quality time with those kids, they probably need it.