The empty middle of the room

At the end of an aerobics class in Hurghada, the instructor asks the room a simple question. Faster next week, or slower?

Half the hands go up for faster. Half for slower. She smiles. The tempo must be exactly right.

It is a tidy piece of reasoning, and it rests on an assumption nobody checks: that what people want is spread out like their heights, with most of them bunched in the middle and a few at the edges. If that were true, the middle would be the safe place to stand.

Preferences rarely look like that. Most of the people in that room have no view about tempo at all. They came because the class is near their flat and starts at a sensible hour. The few who do have a view hold it strongly. Some want to leave drenched. Some want to move without hurting their knees.

And they have a choice. There is a studio across the road that runs a class so hard people talk about it. There is another one by the marina that runs something gentle and slow, full of people who never felt welcome anywhere else. Both have waiting lists. Hers thins out by the second month.

The middle tempo did what it was designed to do. Nobody complained. Nobody was hurt, and nobody was bored enough to say so. Nobody told a friend about it either.

That is the trade the middle quietly makes. It buys fewer complaints with less love. When everyone has somewhere else to go, the people who care most go to the place that was made for them, and the people who do not care were never going to stay for the tempo.

The middle of the room is often empty. It only looks full from the front.