"People -- they're the worst."

I tend not to give people the benefit of the doubt. Stated generally, my opinion is that humanity sucks. This may strike some as a tad judgmental, but then again I don't spare myself from that blanket put-down -- in more than one aspect, I consider myself quite a lousy specimen of life in this universe. (That said, in perhaps an equal if not greater number of aspects, I'm more or less at the top of the heap.)

Anyway, in spite of my cynicism, I occasionally stumble upon something that seems to fly in the face of my inherent people-are-the-worst biases. Less frequently, this "something" goes so far as to shatter my previously-held bias. A recent observation at the gym provides a good example of the former, but falls short of the rock-solid evidence required for the latter:

A couple of weeks ago I started using an iPod, like pretty much everyone and their great-grandmothers have been doing for over a half-decade by now. Admittedly, I'm coming into the MP3 game quite late. What's more, my long-overdue tech-upgrade comes on the strength of a hand-me-down from my buddy's girlfriend. Finally, to make what's already lame considerably lamer, my "new" equipment happens to be an iPod Mini, a model that in terms of scale is to the current generation of iPods what Zach Morris's dad's circa-1990 cell phone is to the Motorola Razr. Fuck it: the thing works, it's not pink, and it was free, which is good enough for me.

So far, I use my iPod only at the gym. I don't know how you'd fare under similar circumstances, but I find it difficult to get my exercise juices flowing to a medley consisting of such disparate genres as, say, Bob Seger/Jessica Simpson/[insert hip-hop "band" du jour]. But because the powers-that-be at my gym insist on pandering to such a wide swath of musical tastes, it's either (a) pump iron to a soundtrack of similarly incoherent hit lists or (b) slap on an iPod.

Anyway, when you work out with earphones, of course, you're going to have some sweat-induced problems keeping the damn things in your ear. It's a pain in the swamp-ass.

Which brings me to my point: for a long time, I thought the only explanation for the guys who wear skull caps while working out was that they were huge douchebags. Wearing a skull cap at the gym struck me as the equivalent of wearing socks in a pool -- unnecessary, retarded, infuriating. But ever since I've started to wear an iPod at the gym, I've been wondering to myself whether the explanation for the skull caps is not unapologetic douchebaggery but, rather, perchance, their practicality in serving as earphone anchors.

Again, mere speculation isn't sufficient for me to lay my douchebag suspicions permanently to rest. But the next time I see a skull-cap-lifter, I won't so hastily assume that I'm looking at a douchebag -- it could simply be that I'm looking at a dude with a solid idea. (Who, for a variety of other reasons, is probably a douchebag anyway.)

P.S. Death to people who reek of B.O. at the gym.