The gang at my language school (guys and girls) would regularly drive out into the country on Saturday nights and go skinny-dipping in a deep mountain stream.* It felt WONDERFUL after sweltering all week in triple-digit heat and humidity.
*Usually after more than a few beers. I once was so drunk, I damned near slid down the gorge naked into God knows how many feet of water. If a classmate hadn’t grabbed my arm, I might have drowned, but WOW! what a way to go! 
I didn’t know until I watched his acceptance speech last night that Daniel Day-Lewis isn’t American. The accent totally threw me for a loop. I was expecting the British accent from Daniel Radcliffe, but then DDL came out and I was like, “What the heck is that sound coming out of his face?”
Of course, this is a step up from a couple years ago, when I heard his name and thought he was the guy who wrote The Last of the Mohicans.
I went to school in IL. between 68-72 and verify that it was required that you shower after gym. Also gym was the only class that you were required to take for four years and you couldn’t double up on it. I met all the requirements for graduation except the four year gym requirement after 3 years and was not allowed to graduate early. I doubled up on math and science and ended up with 5 years of math and 5 years of science and a bunch or electives before I was finally allowed to graduate in 1972.
For years I knew pretty much nothing about Green Day, so I moronically fell for Billie Joe Armstrong’s faux-British singing accent and thought they were British. :smack:
No, I really did mean “Well gosh, how did an obviously streetwise black person such as yourself end up at a hippie alternative college like this? you clearly don’t quite belong”.
Where I grew up the underclass was from Mexico. I hadn’t met any ghetto-raised black people in my life.
He was just twitting me for my crass naivete. In fact he was a remarkable person, one of the more intelligent and sane people I’ve met in my life. Not a man of violence in any way verbal or otherwise.
This happened about five years ago, so I have no excuse for having been this stupid. I bought a bra in a pretty color, and the cashier remarked on how lovely it was. I was pretty excited too, and said to her I’m always grateful when I can find a pretty one in my size because by then my only choices are white or that godawful beige-ish color. She looked at me somewhat strangely and said, “You mean nude?” Oh right! That color is supposed to be color of your skin! :smack: Well it’s not the color of **my skin. I always just thought of it as that color that looks really bad on me.
Huh. It never ever occurred to me that that beige was supposed to be skin-coloured…
FTR, that was my reaction the first time I had to buy a bra in the US and learned that the color is called “nude” there. “It sure ain’t the color I am when nude, either in winter or in summer!”
In Spain, the darker beige is called “whisky”. The guy who wrote the following lyrics has been asked several times which color are her underclothes supposed to be: red, or whisky? He says “what color do you want them to be?”
*hay Cuatro Rosas en tu honor
dentro del vaso que te doy
son del color
de tu ropa interior
hay Cuatro Rosas para tí
there are Four Roses in your honor
inside this glass I’m giving you
they’re the same color
as your underclothes
there’s Four Roses for you*
(Gabinete Caligari, Cuatro Rosas)
On the other side of this I was absolutely astounded (and delighted) to find beer in the vending machine at the train station in Barcelona. I was even more delighted to find I could drink the beer in the station and no one cared! Much to the amusement of my local hosts I took about a hundred pictures of me next to the beer vending machine. Later at the hotel I was astounded (and delighted) to find they show boobies on TV. Boobies! I loved Spain.
missed edit window…
On the subject of nudity: Went to a small high school in a small town in CA foothills. Open showers. Most of the guys in PE classes, 1st - 5th periods, people didn’t shower, but it wasn’t weird if you did. 6th and 7th were ‘jock PE’ and generally we were just warming up before practice which was after school. We always showered after practice. As far as I know the girls did the same. No nude swimming. Well at least not legally during school hours.
When I travel abroad I just do what everyone else is doing. No clothes, no big deal. When in Guatemala had many a tuj(steam bath) with whoever was there. The local women wouldn’t come anywhere near us men but most of the non-USA girls would just climb in naked with us. Some of the USA girls did too, though most took awhile to come to terms. Of course if there were any local men in the tuj, then no girls were allowed.
I went to prep school in New England and all the male athletes showered communally, at shower poles with several spigots coming out of each. I remember being sort of weirded out when I first started, but got used to it pretty quickly. I heard that the female locker room had individual stalls, but no shower curtains, so many of the girls would go back to their dorms to shower. It would seem very strange to me now if someone had a problem with nudity in a locker room, but maybe that’s partly because I spent the last few years taking baths in close proximity to wrinkly Japanese grandpa testicles.
A fan of Tele5, I see… (its nickname is teta5, boobie5)
It took me a little while when I moved back to the US to realize that drinking in public was a big no-no. Reverse culture shock for me. (It actually was more difficult to adjust coming back to a place you’ve lived most your life than vice-versa for me.) Also, my basic cable in Budapest had one channel that turned to “Private Gold” at night, which was a hard-core porn channel. Yes, basic cable. It originally didn’t switch over to anything; then it became “Private Blue” at night (softcore), then, at some point, Private Gold.
That was the only part of going to the baths with my Japanese relatives that I wasn’t wild about …
The old men squat and pour water over themselves to rinse off. So you get the aforementioned unmentionables swinging to and fro just above the floor.
You can buy beer at Penn Station and drink it on the Long Island Railroad. No vending machines though.