Adventures in Showering

It is a really good idea to shower after swimming at the Easton (It’s fun to stay at the) YMCA. Its pool is heavily-chlorinated due to the preponderance of ineffectively swim- diaper-clad toddlers and semi-incontinent seniors (present company excluded?). That chlorine will leave skin drier and more cracked than a day-old orange peel.

The post-swim shower is often an adventure. This morning, I carefully adjusted the water temperature to just past lukewarm, stepped out to grab my supplies, and re-entered to bone-chilling needles. Double whammy! Someone flushed a toilet and someone else turned on another shower. The forty year old Easton YMCA water supply system was not built to handle the simultaneous shower-shower-toilet flush trifecta.

As I adjusted and readjusted water temperature to finally get it bearable, I recalled previous Adventures in Showering. The Boy’s Gym Shower Room at South Scranton Junior High School had six shower heads on each side. Body cleanliness was not important to 13 year old boys. Turning on all twelve showers, soaping up our behinds, getting a running start and sliding across the tile floor was very important. At least part of our body was soaped and clean.

The Shower Room in my barracks at Indiantown Gap Military Reservation had a mere four shower heads on each side. Body cleanliness was not important to ROTC cadets either considering that there were fifty of us living in that barracks. The lack of showering facilities was even more problematical since we often showered while wearing our muddy ponchos. It takes a while to clean that poncho and your body. Hot water lasts for one cycle at most. Eight guys would have clean ponchos for the next inspection. Forty-two would choose between punitive push-ups for muddy ponchos or body core temperatures in the 80s.

Showering at a military construction site in Korea was yet another adventure. We would place a wooden pallet on the dirt (soon to be mud), attach a nozzle to a duffel full of ambient air temperature water, hoist it with whatever equipment was available and hope that the water wouldn’t run out before all the soap was rinsed off.

Come to think of it, showering at the Easton Y may not be as much fun as doing so at SSJHS, but it beats the crap out of IGMR or Korea.

By Ed Dufton