Wednesday, October 03, 2007

If I did this would I be jailed???

I’m asthmatic, have been for 20 years, I’m fairly good at managing it, stress is one of the major causes, dairy products too – key to overcoming it is knowing what to avoid, when it’s coming on, all that Dr Phil type of jazz. One of the things I do is go swimming. My job facilitates it well, I finish at 11.30am, get the DART to the stop before my house, pop in for a swim in a near empty pool and head home. It’s become my routine three times a week.

Anyway I’d a really strange experience today. They started swimming classes for kids two weeks ago, it’s on after the public hour that I go to. There’s two sets of dressing rooms so you alternate them. Was getting changed after my session today.

From here the story begins. Firstly I know some of you have never been in a men’s dressing room so let me fill you in on something. There’s no taboos, hiding yourself behind your towel is a sign of weakness, you go with the old rule of one out all out and just get on with your business. It’s like ancient Rome without the free love and slaves….Until today….

Picture the scene – an adequately sized dressing room on the Northside of Dublin – a mixed group of men are in different stages of transformation from lean, mean, swimming machines to normal men about town.

Enter stage left…middle aged mother with 9 or 10 year old son in tow.

Cue mad scramble for towels from the assembled (mostly naked) male gathering….exchange of puzzled, uncomfortable glances amongst the adonises.

Mother spends what seems an eternity but in reality a number of seconds perusing naked bodies, very much taking in the display.


Mother - “Don’t worry lads, nothing I haven’t seen before”

Silence……assembled, mostly towel protected men share a glance that says…”she’ll fuck off in a minute”.

Mother sits facing uncomfortable men, again taking in the gathering. A number of minutes pass before son departs dressing room for swimming class. Mother reaches into bag and takes OK or some such rag out of bag. Eyeline dances from magazine (briefly) to men (extensively).


Old Man – “you know love you really shouldn’t be in here”

Mother – “Ah the other dressing room is packed and I don’t like sitting on the bank.”

Old Man – “No, I mean it’s not right, you should have taken the lad to the ladies or the toilet”

Mother – “Sure all the mothers come in here, you lads must love it”

Collective gathering in many states of dampness shuffle almost in unison towards door leaving mother alone in men’s dressing room from where she does not emerge. Old Man rants at supervisor, other mothers look on in disgust. Tiberius wonders if he needs counselling.

10 comments:

  1. Old Man was right to complain. That woman was so out of order. How would she feel if a man sat in the women's dressing room while they got changed? That's just utter madness.

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  2. Well, that's really not on - I wonder how she would have reacted were the roles reversed?

    In all honesty, I think pools vitally need to start having family rooms - there is an issue about where boys this age should change - on their own with random naked men? No. In the women's changing room, where they can stare at women's boobs? We'd rather not! In a toilet - not fair to anyone. There needs to be an alternative!

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  3. Sounds like a fairly recurring nightmare I had as a teenager. Tib, we all need counselling!

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  4. That's hilarious. It sounds like a television comedy sketch. Can't believe she stayed when everyone else left.

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  5. Hmm, makes me wonder if Mrs Kent is practicing her x-ray vision...

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  6. Btw I was also born chronic asthmatic, though it did reduce a lot as I left puberty. Before that it was guaranteed: in the hospital at least once or twice a year spending a week in the oxygen tent with pneumonia or bronchitis.

    My world got shaky and uncomfortable when I heard our first son do a wheeze. More depressing than I can describe in mere words. He wasn't supposed to inherit that.

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  7. I have one of those fears about the kids inheriting something Atreus. Won't find out til later in life and it plays on my mind from time to time.

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  8. TB - i've got miles out of this story since yest. Total classic, it'll turn into an urban myth next.

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  9. Oh it was no myth let me tell you......I'm still scared.........

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  10. she's a pervert, that's obv it!

    imagine if a man went into the ladies...there's be war!

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