This morning I was at the gym and as I huffed and puffed on the Front Lateral Pull machine, I noticed a handsome guy working hard on the Hip Abductor machine. That he was handsome was not unusual; this is Hollywood after all. No, what was notable about him was that he was missing his right arm completely, and his left hand was a metal prosthesis. An Iraqi War Vet? Perhaps.

As I watched him expertly manipulate the machine to adjust the weight for a series of sets, the same look of concentration on his face that everyone else at the gym had, without a trace of self-pity or self-consciousness, I could feel a lightbulb going off over my head. I had a moment of utter clarity, leading to the obvious question,

Why don’t I have a wide-screen high-definition television yet?

Seriously. I’m not a bad person. I work, pay taxes, give to charity. And yet I’ve had to play Bioshock, Oblivion, and dozens of other XBox 360 games on my plain old, 32 inch Sony Trinitron.

I’ve been trying to save the money for three years. So why? Why don’t I have a Samsung LN52A630 52″ LCD TV yet? Am I to face the prospect of having to play the new Prince of Persia, Dead Space, or, [shudder] Fable II without the visual glory of high-definition?

Why has the universe singled me out for this kind of suffering? I just looked at my birth certificate, and it doesn’t say the name “Job” anywhere on it.

I don’t know the answer. I just know that few people suffer as I suffer.

So the next time you see someone with a “disability, ” or some other kind of “disadvantage, ” remember my friend in the gym. Perhaps we can all. Learn. Something.