The health club offers a boot camp course—see how this ties into healthcare?  I used to make fun of it until I decided to try it.  The spandex factor is about 9.8 on the spandex/Richter scale.  Thirty-something women whose color coordinated apparel makes it worth the sweat.  (Permit me a brief segue.  Some fashionista recently discovered that it was possible to convince women that instead of wearing one shirt, that it would be more fashionable to wear multiple shirts with coordinated colors.  So, the women in the boot camp course wear an array of clothes such that their headbands match their fingernail polish.)

On most days I am the lone male in the class.  I’ve summited 50 (years, for those wondering the use of the word).  Most of the women in the class are unable to have an intelligent conversation over a latte about Viet Nam.  Trying to be gentle, I attribute that to their age rather than the fact that they were waitlisted on the most recent Mensa membership drive.  Despite their inability to go mano y mano with the former secretary of defense, Robert McNamara, they look darn good in spandex.

I try not to look like I covet their fawning, but as a seven year survivor of the White Male RCA Stent Award, I accept it with a degree of grace.  (For the male readers who wish to make light of Boot Camp, try it before you tease.)

So, there I am, I am there.  It’s my Green Eggs and Ham moment.  Prior to the class I’d run five miles, and completed 33 pull-ups without stopping.  Did I mention I like being the lone male in the class?   There’s a certain adulation that goes with the title.  Some would covet the position, but as an adult, I take it in stride.

However…today another male comes to the class.  I do not mind having another male.  I do however look unfavorably having another male in the class who looks like he trains navy SEALS in his spare time.  The class had the usual amount of male gawking, albeit at the wrong person.

What does this have to do with healthcare information technology?  Not much other than it goes to show you that there are those whose efforts may have superseded your own.  It doesn’t mean much when the item in question is pushups, it means a lot more when you’re trying to determine who did the best job spending one hundred million dollars on an electronic records system.