Steam, it's how you feel to make it real.

For the last few weeks, I've been a regular visitor to the gym. Last spring, I had a good routine going, with both kids out of the house for a few hours each week. But this fall finds me in the gym three days each week. I can't say I'm enjoying it, but my blood pressure is down, which is why I'm there to begin with.

There was a delay to the start. School took an extra ten days to get going, given a strike by the teachers. The hardest part of the delay was not the actual lack of school. It was the uncertainty. We had the end of the summer pretty well planned, and then it kept inching along.  But the teachers won some needed concessions, and we got ourselves back in order.

So when I finally got to the gym sans kids, the goal was not just to exercise, but also to take a breather. That sent me straight to the steam room.

I take time to sit in the steam room because it feels like the most adult thing I get to do in a day. There's no other way to put it. Being in a hot damp room wrapped only in a towel is the sign of being a grown up. Not booze or sex or voting or working or driving. Being an adult means that I get to spend time in a little box, naked and lightly poaching.

Now, I don't buy the whole "exude toxins" reason for getting a sweat on. My liver, for the moment, does a perfectly acceptable job at that. It does feel great to hop out of the steam room and take a shower, but not because some imaginary metals have been cleansed from my body. I go to the gym straight from the wake-up/get out of the house routine, so the end of gym is the real start of the rest of my day.

I am sure that part of the appeal is due to the steam room scene in The Blues Brothers. It's one of those perfectly little plot movers, where Jake and Elwood are pleading their case and using every form of coercion to get Maury to book them a big gig. Everyone's wrapped only in a towel, but the little additions - the Brothers keeping their hats and sunglasses on, Maury's gold chains - maintain the characters (and reinforce how sincere Jake is when he finally takes his sunglasses off at the end of the movie). Then they cut wide and show that the rest of the band is sitting right there, following the brothers anywhere, but not fully trusting them to do a damn thing themselves. It's awesome.

Maury, you owe us.

Business has never been conducted while I'm in a steam room. I've chatted with some people, and usually say good morning to the folks who are in there when I arrive. Often, I let my mind wander while I listen to the creaking and popping of the joints in my shoulders. Sometimes it has to do with the rest of the day's agenda. Sometimes it's a runaway train of jabber. Most of the time it's absolutely brilliant, and then immediately lost when I hit outside air. Like a spectacular new app, a cutting opinion piece, or a much better version of this post.

That, I guess, is the strangest part of the appeal of steam room time. We used to just sit around and daydream, where the new ideas just came and left. They didn't matter because we used them, they mattered because we thought them. Now I get to go into a special little room that's at a special temperature in order to have an excuse to daydream. And it feels more like adulthood than so much else.