The school shower room
I’m not sure why I want to tell you this story. I don’t even know if it counts as ‘too much information’. I mean, it involves a bunch of teenagers being thrown into the communal showers at school, but I don’t know if that itself is enough. The real reason I want to tell you this story is because it’s the last time I played sports. Sure, I still hit a ball around occasionally, and I still play a little table tennis, but this story is the reason I never took part in organised sports at school after the age of 14.
Like most bad experiences at schools the world over, throughout history, it involved a bad teacher. Oh, and it included bullies too. Bad teachers and bullies, the stuff of collective, pubescent nightmare.
You can probably tell this isn’t going to be a happy story, further adding to my concern that this isn’t really TMI fodder — head on over to Lilu’s blog if you want happier fare. But I assure you, before this story is out, you’re going to feel like I’ve told you too much.
We always played sports in the winter. I don’t know why. It was always damn cold and damn wet. There’s no damp like English damp, it chills right to the bone. It actually all began when I turned up to football practice in some warmer sweatpants/sports trousers — you know, the flannel/fleecy kind. I figured if we were going to run around like retards, I’d at least like to keep some sensation in my legs. There’s nothing like having a hard, cold football kicked into your bare legs, by the way. The brief cessation of all feeling followed by the flooding return of stinging pain as your numb, cold thighs register the impact. That’s why I wanted to wear more than shorts. Protection… safety… you know, normal human urges.
But my teacher wasn’t a normal human being. He was pretty young — early 20s maybe — and a complete, draconian dick. He was a football nut — as in the kind of person that actually thrives on running around in the cold and kicking a ball — and as such tried to impose his own ludicrous view of the world upon us poor teenagers. He didn’t like that I wasn’t wearing shorts. In fact, shorts were the uniform in his sports lessons.
“Take them off.”
“But I don’t have any shorts with me.”
“Take them off!”
And so I played football in my underwear. It was as shit and as painful as you can imagine, and about twice as cold.
I wore those tiny sportsshorts after that and made do with bruised, stinging thighs. It was marginally better than being told to strip down to underwear in front of my friends.
I guess this was probably when my rebellious streak really kicked in. Or wait, not rebellious… sane streak. Some of my other friends also kicked up a fuss, but they all eventually fell into line under this sports teacher (though ‘teacher’ is too generous. He was basically a thug with a whistle.) I could never quite kick the idea that running around in a field, in the cold, in the rain, in the fucking sleet, with tiny shorts on… well, it always felt a bit stupid. Like the crazy ideology of a mad man: Ja! These children will run in ze cold! In tiny shorts and vests! Zis will make them into men! – or something like that.
And then there were the showers. My school wasn’t a very classy affair. The changing room was this brutally cold, hard room with seemingly no heating. It had a huge door that led outside to the sports field, a door into the school itself, and a communal shower in the corner.
Showering was part of the sports ritual. According to our tyrant of a teacher anyway. Everyone stripping down and jumping into the shower for a good ol’… I don’t know. Tussle? Convivial soapy sponge-down? Fuck, I haven’t thought about these memories in 10 years, but we were forced to shower together.
Cold water too. Sometimes we got warm water, sometimes we didn’t. Mostly it was ice cold. The jocks — there were a few — jumped in first. The rest of us, the cautious dissenters, usually waited until we were forced to undress and waddle protectively into a corner of the shower. I think it was worse than it should’ve been because I was so young, some two years younger than most of the other boys. It’s not so weird for a 14-year-old to question whether he wants to jump into a communal shower with some ‘big’ 16-year-olds, right? This wasn’t the only chain of incidents that triggered my self-esteem issues, but it played a big part.
The whole showering thing happened three times until I finally stopped turning up to sports classes. I would actually hide somewhere in the school when it was time for sports. The teacher rounded me up a few times, frog-marching me to the football field, before finally giving up on me. I guess I wasn’t destined to be one of those idiots that liked running around in the cold.
Can you guess where I usually hid? The computer room. And that was that.
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I am told they breed this type of Neanderthal at Loughborough University, like orcs (made not born) . Where upon graduating they swap nerve endings, braincells and tact for a shiny whistle.
This threw up a lot of weird stuff for me too. I think the shower (or as I fondly remember it “Location for a harrowing war based film”) was responsible for a lot. They always had a specific smell that you only really find in schools.
Hideous.
January 21st, 2010 at 7:49 amI used to think this sort of stuff happens only in movies!
January 21st, 2010 at 11:31 amThere are so many sadistic sports teachers out there. I remember the worst thing about showers was being forced to have one despite not having brought a towel, and ending up trying to dry yourself off with the same sports kit out of desperation.
) and then after the age of 15 or so we had a much wider range to choose from. Those of us who weren’t built like tractors were allowed to do fencing or, thanks to one of the maths teachers, school-rules croquet. Good times.
January 21st, 2010 at 1:37 pmThankfully after I left prep school, my next school was more accomodating. People who didnt like Rugby could at least go rowing (I was the cox
Ugh, we always avoided showers like the plague at my middle school. I guess I might have been sweaty, but it sounds a lot better than that.
Actually, come to think of it, my gym teacher then was a troll too.
January 21st, 2010 at 1:51 pmAnd I suddenly found inspiration for my next blog post! I’ll post some of my gym class traumas! I had to keep reminding myself that the UK refers to soccer as football- so I’m reading this thinking, “dang- if you keep getting hit with a football in the legs you people suck. Even I know that” but alas, you are referring to what I call a soccer ball. Which is how I broke my nose in 10th grade. Will post on that later.
We had a shower room in my middle school that was used as a bomb shelter and it was all concrete, no heat, basement of the building. AND there were peep holes for the teacher to see in, but more peep holes in the boys’ room. At least in high school it was a step up but I was more worried about catching communicable diseases in there. Ew.
January 21st, 2010 at 2:19 pmDo they still enforce school showers?? We had them at our school, too, and I remember also having to change into my swimming costume in this tiny little shack with about 20 other girls, everyone trying to hide behind their towels before we got into the FREEZING pool full of leaves and bugs and the roughest concrete on the bottom. Who ever thought you could cut your feet swimming? The showers were just as traumatic, and yep, we had ridiculous uniforms for cross country, too – my legs would get COVERED in mud and my shoes ended up brown and soaked through. Oh the things that shape us!!
January 21st, 2010 at 2:44 pmAnd people wonder why I hate sports. I was regularly mocked as a child for being most unathletic. And then there’s the general humiliation in Middle and High school. And I spent a chunk of high school at 7,000 feet and let me tell you, I got muscle cramps easy enough without the lack of oxygen, so trying to run and do sporty things at 7,000 feet? Nightmare. Granted, even though the school was smaller than sane, they still could sometimes outplay a lot of fancy rich schools because they had better functioning lungs. Obviously, I was not one of those people.
At least there was Scottish Country Dancing, which was much much better. Yay for Scottish gym teachers?
January 21st, 2010 at 3:34 pmWe were forced into showers at school too. Although ours were warm and fairly modern. It was only years later that I found out that Miss Thompson our teacher who used to keep an eye on us in the showers was a a lezzer!
January 21st, 2010 at 4:09 pmI consider myself very lucky, in my school there were too many girls so the changing rooms were too small, showering would have involved soaking the clothes of the people that changed in the shower area XD I even managed to avoid swimming by pointing at the eczema on my arm and saying the chlorine in the pool made it worse, pretty much and only time in my life that I’ve been happy to eczema.
January 21st, 2010 at 4:47 pm[...] Sebastian’s The school shower room [...]
January 21st, 2010 at 5:08 pmI thank the Good Lord above that I never had to take a community shower.
You poor bastard.
But hey, when the hell are you going to come over to my place (my blog, not my place of residence) and have a look around? You ol’ English bastard!
That’s how to get traffic. Good old fashion racism.
January 21st, 2010 at 5:14 pmHoly McCow. Doing anything at school in panties would be a lawsuit here, lol.
We had showers at our middle school but no one used them (and frankly, a girl can’t shower and change in 5 minutes, thanks) and our highschool ones weren’t mandatory either but we’d use them after swimming and they were INSANELY creepy and old and the Howard Hughes in me made sure I bathed in a suit with shoes.
January 21st, 2010 at 6:51 pmAh, the memories this post has evoked Seb. My gym teachers through high school were pretty ok, and after a bit of initial awkwardness showering wasn’t too bad either. In fact, HS gym showers seemed almost luxurious compared to the ones we got at boot camp (but that’s another story).
Gym class, though, *was* the time for the bullies to make their moves. Soccer practice too. I may have been a bit of a geek, but at least I grew up to be a BIG geek. It’s amazing how much easier it is to move about your high school halls when you’re 6 feet and 200 pounds. It also helps to band together with the other “weirdos.” There’s strength in numbers.
January 21st, 2010 at 7:51 pmI have always, in exactly my whole life, avoided, fled, run from, ditched school from, just happened to sleep in, forgot my clothes, gotten sick, etc etc etc, you name it, to avoid sports. I HATE sports, still. Altough, now I can workout and all that jazz on my own, but I so strongly remember all those times, looking out the window from the sports halls, wishing so hard I was somewhere else that my head hurt.
Ugh, the smell, the feeling creeping over me. I’m gonna take a shower now.
January 21st, 2010 at 8:35 pm[...] PE teacher geek theory Posted in rants 01/21/10 I was reading Mr Seb’s post in which he reminisces about his PE lessons and it reminded me of my own experiences attempting to play sport in school. Aside from the showers [...]
January 21st, 2010 at 9:58 pmHeya!
Sorry about the slow response. I was without power for most of the day again… shitty, shitty electricity. I’m going to have to buy a UPS or something. Or a generator. Just for my bedroom.
Forgive me, I’m not going to respond to you all individually — it would read more like an essay than a blog comment
This one’s actually fairly sensitive to me — not sure what I wrote about it, really. It just bubbled to the surface. Probably the snow, actually (which I’d been photographing just before I wrote this, thus the bird photo!)
I’ve been basically the ’same person’ since I was about 17. Almost all of the ‘weight’ I carry with me is from these early days at school. I wish I’d been born 6′5″… maybe I would’ve avoided all the bullying and the like.
I just hope I can make up the lost years, and finally banish these self-esteem issues. It’s happening… slowly but surely
January 22nd, 2010 at 2:08 amyeah I use to get it from the “teach” for sitting in the stands and writing poetry instead of playing.
January 22nd, 2010 at 5:33 pmAt least you were _allowed_ to sit and watch
I tried that once or twice… didn’t work.
January 22nd, 2010 at 5:34 pmhave award for you. at blog. short comment- son is now peeing on wall..
January 23rd, 2010 at 12:23 amThe things you post on my blog…
January 23rd, 2010 at 12:26 amwe don’t have showers in school – which is exactly the reason why i avoided PE like mad. excuse: having my period. lol the last day of the final year in high school, my PE teacher was like: I know you were not having your period on weekly basis, you were just avoiding PE classes. also, i don’t like running in long pants and long sleeved shirts under the scorching sun. (they don’t allow girls to wear shorts & sleeveless in school – mad right??!)
January 24th, 2010 at 4:00 pm