I’ve seen discussions of things that are and aren’t appropriate in a locker room. Well, I have a new one. In fact a couple of them. At least I think this is weird.
Okay. I was standing in the shower, lathering up with my new anti-chlorine shampoo, when a woman walked into the shower room. She was not just fully dressed, including shoes. She still had on her coat and hat and was carrying a backpack.
Now the setup here is that to get to the pool from the locker rooms you have to walk through the shower area. And by “shower area” I mean an area that is open and has 4 shower heads on each side. The common courtesy is that if someone is showering on one side, the next person goes to a shower head on the other side, so there are times (and this was one of them) when it is impossible to walk through this area without getting a little wet. But even if there’s only one person, it’s a wet, steamy place, and that’s okay because you’re either on your way to the hot tubs/sauna/steam room/pool area or on your way back.
Not this lady, though. And it made me feel weird. Although I think the weirdest thing was that she was wearing boots in the shower.
(I should probably mention that there are a lot of ways to get to the pool that don’t involve walking through the locker rooms.)
See, if I ended up fully dressed, in street clothes including winter outerwear, in a shower room, where two naked people were taking showers at the time, I would think to myself, “Hmm, I must be in the wrong place,” and I would get the hell out. Or I would think I was dreaming and I would attempt to wake up.
This lady didn’t. She walked through, opened the door leading to the pool area, and went–well, I don’t know where she went from there. (Her choices: steam room, hot tub, sauna, pool area.) A few minutes later though she came back, leading me to believe she hadn’t made it all the way to the pool. (Mainly because from the pool, every other egress is much more straightforward.)
On the way through the first time she kinda smiled and said Hi. Ditto on the way back. Yeah, we’re all friendly here.
It does happen that people are getting a tour of the facilities prior to signing up and are taken through the locker areas. I have never seen a staff person actually take a guest through the shower area though.
For some reason I found this much weirder than I found the lady who had the industrial sized makeup case, who spent 30-45 minutes putting on her makeup, all without getting dressed first.
The second weird thing: At this point I had showered and dressed and was drying my hair. I went back into area adjacent to the showers to retrieve my swimsuit and goggles and there was a woman who had been in the pool and who was layign out her shower things. She turned on the shower, and started singing! She kept singing the whole time I was drying my hair. The place echoes and she was really belting it out.
Okay, this one’s not so weird. I guess you can do anything in the shower at the gym that you do in the shower at home.
In case anyone was wondering, Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” (or maybe it is called “Clouds”). I don’t think I’ve heard it in 20 years and now it’s going through my head.
(Also once I’ve been earwormed I like to pass it along.)