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Schoolkids love smelling, hate showering (naked, in school, in front of peers)

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Small Town Guy, Jan 3, 2011.

  1. HandsomeHarley

    HandsomeHarley Well-Known Member

    Maybe you could Google his name. ;)
     
  2. Ace

    Ace Well-Known Member

    Or you could Bing Boing!
     
  3. StaggerLee

    StaggerLee Well-Known Member

    Re: Schoolkids love smelling, hate showering (naked, in school, in front of peer

    Went to high school in the late 80s, early 90s and never once showered at school. The showers in the gym never worked and the ones in our football locker room were used as extra storage space. After games (and practices), I'd usually strip down to my under shirt and shorts, throw my pants and jersey into the laundry bin in the locker room and head home. I'd shower as soon as I got home.

    Road games were a little different because we usually had access to gyms with showers. But I can count on two hands the number of guys who would actually use the showers after games. I'd imagine, like myself, a lot of guys were self-conscious about their bodies. I knew of one guy who would actually shower in his under shirt and shorts (compression shorts, but shorts nonetheless). And of course, there were the couple of guys who were blessed down below who loved nothing more than to strip down to their birthday suit and dangle (so to speak).

    Since I've graduated, they've built a pretty nice locker room at the stadium (winning state a couple of times will do that to a program). The new locker room has, I think, a half-dozen private shower stalls and more players seem to take showers after the game now than when I played.
     
  4. micropolitan guy

    micropolitan guy Well-Known Member

    Hell, back in the dark ages (1960s) we swam nekked in gym class because the pool had no windows and was segregated by sex. In elementary school I remember the nurse watching our annual physical. Dr. "Cold Hands" Carfagna would tell you to turn and cough and you'd be staring right into the nurse's eyes.
     
  5. Blitz

    Blitz Active Member

    I, too, had P.E. everyday in junior high (7th at one school, then 8th-9th at another)
    That was 1977-80.
    We had to shower everyday or we could get no higher than a C.
    The Brut spray deodorant? Hell yeah I remember using it.
    We had lockers in the gym dressing room and the coaches would paddle if they issued an edict to take stinky clothes home and it wasn't followed.
    Paddling and required gym class are bygone institutions at most schools today.
    For many, many years they were both beneficial and instrumental in the shaping of healthy, productive youths.
     
  6. MTM

    MTM Well-Known Member

    PE is still mandatory in California middle schools and, I believe, two years of high school. The kids dress out every day.

    But while I remember rotations of basketball, soccer, volleyball, football softball and handball, and even track and field, wrestling and gymnastics, most of the time my son tells me they have free time.

    That means the better athletes play basketball or football, the less aggressive kids stand and watch and the loners sit off to the side contemplating their navels.
     
  7. Small Town Guy

    Small Town Guy Well-Known Member

    Blitz's substitute teacher.

     
  8. Dyno

    Dyno Well-Known Member

    In my high school, in the girls' locker room, the showers didn't work (it was one big room, with no stalls). The boys didn't take showers after gym class but I don't know if it was because the showers weren't working. I also don't remember anyone smelling too bad.

    Our gym teachers were notorious for not giving us enough time to change out of our gym clothes. I remember lots of times the bell ringing for us to head to our next class and we were still out on the gym floor. It didn't matter how often someone would tell the teachers what time it was. I guess that was their passive-aggressive way.
     
  9. RickStain

    RickStain Well-Known Member

    Nobody showered in my school. Maybe one kid did and everyone thought he was weird. And now, looking back, the school stank pretty bad.

    Before my junior year, my school finally found out that they couldn't ignore all the high-school courses I had taken at my old school as an eighth-grader and I had enough credits to skip to senior. The problem was that I still had to meet the state's P.E. requirements, so I had to take double P.E. that year.

    That same year, the school switched to block scheduling. So you had four of your classes each day for twice as long, and then the next day you had the other four classes. My double P.E. got scheduled back-to-back every other day in the mornings on "A" days.

    So scrawny, 5-foot-6, 115-lb. nerdy Rick is now a junior in a senior's P.E. class, going straight through from homeroom to lunch. Then not showering and stinking the rest of the day.

    And I wondered why I wasn't popular. (Actually, I didn't wonder and smelling better probably wouldn't have changed my personality.)
     
  10. Small Town Guy

    Small Town Guy Well-Known Member

    Showering was just accepted as a rite of passage. But the towels...our school only used towels that would generously be described as hand towels if they were used in a residence. They were loin cloths, hardly up to the task of drying or covering. I also knew, from my previous experience as basketball manager, that they were likely bacteria-filled rags. As manager, if practice was ending and the towels weren't ready, we'd simply throw in some dirty ones into the dryer, then put them in the clean pile. Christ. I'm sure the little brats who served as managers when I was in high school employed similar tactics. At least that's what I thought when the towels always felt like they'd just come out of the dryer.
     
  11. Pencil Dick

    Pencil Dick Member

    I've had two staph infections in my life.

    The first came from a basketball locker room in junior high. That one could have been fatal because of where it was located ... the nose.

    The second came from a basketball locker room in high school.
     
  12. Small Town Guy

    Small Town Guy Well-Known Member

    And your unfortunate username came from 9th grade gym?
     
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