Saturday, November 28, 2009

Is Nothing Sacred?

I've joined my local YMCA.  It's a Pacific Northwest, new agey YMCA which doesn't care whether members are Christian or a same sex couple and they're even open on the Lord's designated day of rest (other local YMCA's are not open on Sunday).  There's no mention in person or on the walls of the "C" in YMCA.  I wear my MP3 player and I sweat to the oldies with the rest of the overweight guys and hausfraus, doing my part to nullify the “Y” in YMCA. 
  
IMAG0021My local YMCA doesn’t dwell on the “M” in YMCA either. Some genius Dad recently brought in his 4 kids, a boy and 3 little girls into the Men’s locker room.  I wanted to peel off my sweaty clothes but I felt modest in front of the little girls, none was probably older than 5 or 6 and all were clothed, including Dad.  I held off for awhile while the kids played at a large scale off to my left.  Dad saw that I was there and that I was about to pull off my sweaty shorts and reveal my full frontal birthday suit so he called his flock away.

 But one little girl had many questions about the scale and sensitive, new age Dad felt he had to give her all the time she needed, even in the Men’s locker room.  I had enough and stripped.  I was in the right place to be doing that too, if I can’t strip down to my birthday suit to shower and change in the Men’s locker room for fear of offending underage females and being labeled a perv then I might as well wear a burka or just stay home.

My local YMCA has three locker rooms, Men’s, Women's and and one labeled “Family”.  Signs posted at the entrance to each explains that boys younger than 5 are permitted entry into the Women’s locker room.  But as you can see from the outlines on the picture above the Men’s locker room is very inclusive.  Boys, girls and Men and the wheelchair bound are all welcome. 

I went to the showers but Dad had already waddled in there with his brood.  They were all wearing bathing suits, probably washing up before going into the pool.  This Men’s locker room at my YMCA has shower stalls fronted with plastic shower curtains but I came out of my stall wearing nothing but water when I realized that I had forgotten my razor.  One little girl stared at full frontal naked me in amazement.  One of us didn’t belong in there, can you guess which one? 

But it probably doesn’t matter.  I’m sure that the day is coming when men will be encouraged, and persuaded by well meaning laws if necessary to refrain from nakedness and being offensive with their mere presence to young girls in the Men’s locker room.

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