Well, I was that overweight kid with the gut and the tits that just dreaded showering after gym class. It haunted me knowing that was coming every week, and there was no way around it.
I can't remember how I got out of it, but my mother ended up intervening, and Coach assigned me the task of painting the football team mascot and colors in different parts of the gym. I didn't have to change up anymore, and for awhile, it was heaven - about a week, I think. That's when the funniest thing happended.
I became almost obsessed with what was going on in the lockerroom, after PE class - especially what was going on in those gang-line showers, and what that felt like.
Just around the time my mother got me out of changing up, I was just getting used to showering with classmates. Not overjoyed about it and nothing sexual either, but I just realized nobody cared about me being naked one way or the other. Sure, there were jokes about the fat kids, the bony kids, the underdeveloped kids and the overdeveloped kids - but that was everybody! Everybody checked out what the other guy had and cracked on him, and you just cracked right back, and nobody was exempt. Yet, amidst all that joking and pointing, you came away with something valuable and self-affirming.
From the bullies we hated, the rich kids we envied and jocks we idolized, right through the slobs [me] and the geeks, people are far more alike than we are different.
Stinking to high God and bathing is the great common denominator. The bottom line for all of us.
Nothing leveled the social arena like being herded under a row of spigots with a bunch of guys as sweaty, smelly, wet, naked and exhausted as you were. For a couple of days every week, all of the pretensions to coolness and designer labels were cast off, leaving us only our common humanity to deal with. Sure the rich guy was still rich, and the bully was still a jerk, when the water was turned off, but it was a little relief knowing you had a bigger tool than the jock .. or the rich kid had a funny-shaped butt under the horse stitched on his backpocket. In ways that we couldn't articulate back then, I can honestly say that bathing brought us all a little closer together and left us all feeling a little more confident about who were individually, .. inside and out.
The shame of sitting by, painting, while the rest of the guys bravely filed into that lockerroom after PE was far greater than any anxiety I ever had about the stretchmarks and cellulite on my ass. I felt completely immasculated by it, and deservedly so. I asked for an out, and I got my out - left out.
Let me take the high road here.
I realize that young people have insecurities and anxieties about growing up. I maintain, however, that indulging their every, hormone-driven whim is not the way to help them through it. Instead of putting up little partitions to hide them from the world, we should be encouraging them to rush in where angels dare to tread. We should be encouraging them to accept themselves as they are, to embrace their individual differences and to understand that those differences are what connect them to the world.
Most importantly, we should be teaching them responsibility. When you've got a problem, no mater how inconvenient it is for you, you fix it. When you're filthy (smelly or not), you bathe. Leaving a kid covered in bacteria for half a day in the name of protecting their self-esteem is damned lunacy and a complete abdication of adult authority and responsibility. Call me a nazi or whatever you like, but this is nothing more than an indulgence of fear and vanity, and it's wrong.
Maybe, it's even un-American.
I just think we're turning our kids into a bunch of yellow-bellied, pee-shy sissies, who think nothing of running away from their problems, instead of rolling up their sleeves and toughing things out. Heaven help the generations that follow.
I can't remember how I got out of it, but my mother ended up intervening, and Coach assigned me the task of painting the football team mascot and colors in different parts of the gym. I didn't have to change up anymore, and for awhile, it was heaven - about a week, I think. That's when the funniest thing happended.
I became almost obsessed with what was going on in the lockerroom, after PE class - especially what was going on in those gang-line showers, and what that felt like.
Just around the time my mother got me out of changing up, I was just getting used to showering with classmates. Not overjoyed about it and nothing sexual either, but I just realized nobody cared about me being naked one way or the other. Sure, there were jokes about the fat kids, the bony kids, the underdeveloped kids and the overdeveloped kids - but that was everybody! Everybody checked out what the other guy had and cracked on him, and you just cracked right back, and nobody was exempt. Yet, amidst all that joking and pointing, you came away with something valuable and self-affirming.
From the bullies we hated, the rich kids we envied and jocks we idolized, right through the slobs [me] and the geeks, people are far more alike than we are different.
Stinking to high God and bathing is the great common denominator. The bottom line for all of us.
Nothing leveled the social arena like being herded under a row of spigots with a bunch of guys as sweaty, smelly, wet, naked and exhausted as you were. For a couple of days every week, all of the pretensions to coolness and designer labels were cast off, leaving us only our common humanity to deal with. Sure the rich guy was still rich, and the bully was still a jerk, when the water was turned off, but it was a little relief knowing you had a bigger tool than the jock .. or the rich kid had a funny-shaped butt under the horse stitched on his backpocket. In ways that we couldn't articulate back then, I can honestly say that bathing brought us all a little closer together and left us all feeling a little more confident about who were individually, .. inside and out.
The shame of sitting by, painting, while the rest of the guys bravely filed into that lockerroom after PE was far greater than any anxiety I ever had about the stretchmarks and cellulite on my ass. I felt completely immasculated by it, and deservedly so. I asked for an out, and I got my out - left out.
Let me take the high road here.
I realize that young people have insecurities and anxieties about growing up. I maintain, however, that indulging their every, hormone-driven whim is not the way to help them through it. Instead of putting up little partitions to hide them from the world, we should be encouraging them to rush in where angels dare to tread. We should be encouraging them to accept themselves as they are, to embrace their individual differences and to understand that those differences are what connect them to the world.
Most importantly, we should be teaching them responsibility. When you've got a problem, no mater how inconvenient it is for you, you fix it. When you're filthy (smelly or not), you bathe. Leaving a kid covered in bacteria for half a day in the name of protecting their self-esteem is damned lunacy and a complete abdication of adult authority and responsibility. Call me a nazi or whatever you like, but this is nothing more than an indulgence of fear and vanity, and it's wrong.
Maybe, it's even un-American.
I just think we're turning our kids into a bunch of yellow-bellied, pee-shy sissies, who think nothing of running away from their problems, instead of rolling up their sleeves and toughing things out. Heaven help the generations that follow.
