My closest thing to using the dreaded PE showers was when the kids took my street clothes from my locker and soaked them in it. In midwinter. PE is hell.
My god, Spoons! I just wanted to bawl my own eyes out reading that. Good lord! Did anyone say anything nasty about poor Jeff after that, or did they just pick on the Coach?
We never had to take showers. We DID wash our hair after swimming, but we wore our bathing suits. In fact, most of us looked FORWARD to the showers. You were FREEZING and stinking after that dirty, disgusting, slimy thing they called a pool. The showers were nice and warm…aaaahhh…
Then, our MALE gym teacher would poke his head in (their were two shower areas-one was right between the pool and the girls’ locker room) to tell us to turn off the water if we were in there too long. Um, hello-it’s the GIRLS’ LOCKER ROOM, pervert! No, we weren’t naked, but c’mon!
But that pool…ew! It was just nasty!
Class of '92.
Middle school and high school we were expected to shower after P.E. though there was nobody watching to make sure you did.
Pretty much everybody showered with little fuss about it. I don’t remember it being particularly traumatic. They were communal showers, not stalls.
About the only teasing behavior that surrounded showers was a practice that made everybody sure to lock there basket while in the shower.
If you left your basket open while showering and somebody noticed they would slather the crotch of your underwear with Icy-Hot or a similar item. About ten minutes after leaving the locker room that person would be dancing down the halls.
At summer camp this kid in our bunk convinced this other kid that he used Icy-Hot to masturbate. He told him to just put a little bit on himself and he could see. He said it felt like, “A girl licking your nuts.” The kid took some on his fingers and stuck them down his shorts, a little bit later his holding himself hunched over. The kid that convinced him said, “Oh, sorry I meant to say that’s what it feels like when a girl bites your nuts.”
When I was in middle school, they had communal showers and I had no problem using them if only I had time to shower within that class. We were given three minutes to change and get our stuff then get to class at the time, and it was hellish just trying to get from the gym to my locker in a crowded hallway to a class across campus. I have never had a problem showering in front of people, but then again, I guess this has to do with my experiences at an earlier age at public pools in Europe. [You have to shower before you get in, and most of the time there’s no divider or curtain. No biggie after the first time.]
I went to an all-boys high school, so everyone would overcompensate on masculinity to make sure they weren’t perceived as gay.
We had to shower occasionally in gym, which was thankfully only required in freshman year. I think we showered less than 10 times in 9 months.
It was awkward, but not overly traumatizing. No one would make any remarks about someone else for fear of the dreaded “and why are you looking?” comeback.
Actually, most of the time that showers were required, you wanted one, because the activity was probably VERY strenuous. We had one gym class where we did nothing but running: slow, fast, slow and fast, sprints, long-distance, we even ran sideways. By time it was over, my heart was beating faster than it ever has, even to this day, my asthmatic lungs were about to explode, and my body wasn’t just sweating, I could feel more and more sweat coming out.
That shower felt GOOD. My lungs and heart took a half hour to recover.
I hated gym class but loved my teacher because he understood that I hated gym class because I was unathletic and was a total geek in high school, so I wasn’t very popular. But I kicked ass on the health exams.
Spoons, I cannot fathom the trauma that poor child went through. It’s enough to make me want to ban PE entirely.
I consider myself lucky that I have never been forced to shower in public. I could probably adjust, but I definitely didn’t want to. In both middle school and high school some kids showered, but most didn’t.
Shouldn’t that be JROTC? Don’t think they ever commissioned 2LTs out of high school.
Jman
I hated it. I hated showering in gym with every fiber of my being. It’s kind of funny- I’ve had people say that gym might be a bonus if you’re gay; all of those naked girls. Not quite.
I ended up doing something like saying I had an irregular menustral cycle and claiming that I had my period a lot.
It was only in 7th grade that they made us do it; in 8th our gym teacher didn’t make us. Didn’t have to in high school.
Class of '99, small town, south of Kansas City
We had showers in the locker room, we didn’t ever use them. They were mostly for beating up kids in while changing. You drag them into the shower room, beat their ass, and turn the water on them, on freezing cold. It happened sometimes, but not often.
The basketball guys showered before school in the mornings, after practice. One guy was caught masturbating during a shower once, oddly, he wasn’t really made fun of for it.
–Tim
I had P.E. from 8th to 11th grade (required). Showering was always required after the period was over. I was a spectacularly unpopular boy and was taunted with “queer bait” and “faggot” and other such epithets, and the undressing / showering routine was pretty creepy, all right. Of course, the P.E. classes themselves were pretty creepy. The instructors were the same coaches who coached the voluntary competitive team sports, and they were used to the boys who deliberately and enthusiastically tried to get onto teams despite being belittled and yelled at and treated disparagingly by these same coaches, and the coaches regarded those boys as the ones with the proper attitude. They spoke to us the same way and treated the rest of us the way they would treat “washouts” who attempted and failed to make the competitive teams. This sort of encouraged some of the boys to be violent and abusive towards those of us who weren’t athletically inclined. Mostly it was stuff like slamming lockers in your face, hurling sopping wet towels at you, throwing your underwear in the toilet while you were showering, that kind of thing, but sometimes punching and tripping as well, and sometimes invitations to continue fighting after school off the school grounds, etc.
The gay-baiting stuff tended to take the form of “faggots are effeminate guys that other guys could fuck like a girl”, and the combination of hostility, implicit and explicit violence, and rough talk about fags and queers sort of blended together into a hovering rape threat (and then they blame the potential victims for generating this atmosphere).
We were required to dress and shower for PE - and it was a mandatory class thru 12th grade. After the first couple of weeks each school year, it wasn’t a big deal. Then I joined the Navy - no privacy in boot camp… you just do what you have to do.
We take sailing vacations now, and some marinas have what amount to communal showers. It doesn’t bother me any longer. It’s just skin, ya know? I’m not ready to dash off to a nudist resort, but I don’t find nekkidness that big a deal.
Frankly, I think too many Americans have bizarre hangups about nudity, and we cause the upcoming generations unnecessary grief by perpetuating the attitudes…
In junior high school, mid 70’s, we HAD to take showers - in the communal shower area. The teacher checked each person off as we came out of the shower and grabbed a towel, so there was no “stick your head in and get it wet” stuff. However, I don’t remember anyone using soap 
In high school, everyone took showers, and it’s a good thing we did. There were a few times when some classmates skipped showering, and you could tell in the next class who had just come from the locker room.
I do remeber junior high showers after gym class. They were no big deal for me, but the gym teacher was a certified screwball! he was always eyeing us after we left the showers.
years later, I heard that he had been arrested for molesting children.
I don’t think anybody said anything nasty about Jeff after that. His condition (infirmity? disfigurement? problem?) was whispered between us kids, but I don’t recall anybody making fun of him, or being insulting at all. I think most of us felt sorry for the poor guy, both for his condition and for the way the teacher treated him.
Still, nobody at school had a hard time believing the teacher’s cruelty. This teacher had a reputation for being a hard case and a strict disciplinarian, and even those of us who normally liked sports and physical activity didn’t like this teacher’s class.
we had to shower in school after P.E.
It wasn’t that big a deal really. we were all in the same boat. Communal changing rooms, communal showers. All boys school, Female P.E. instructor. the scariest woman I have ever met. a small wiry woman that was a captian of the local camogie team (camogie is a female vession of Hurling, and can be just as violent.) really tough woman. She constantly had the expression of a bulldog licking piss off a nettle, but I digress).
we were allowed wear shorts into the showers. There was never any personal comments made, just the usual banter amongst friends. The one thing noone did was to wear white shorts into the shower. That just resulted in a torrent of slagging from the rest of the class. (you know what happens when white shorts get wet… )
I used to wear a spare pair of black basketball shorts. I liked to show off 
hehehe
The only bullies in my year always sat together, and thaught they were something else. One of them was one of the toughest people I have ever met. he wasnt a bully, just extremely intimidating. His friend was a mouthy asshole who used the big guy’s intimidatory stature to hide behind.
One day, the Mouth kept on pushing and pushing on one lad. The poor kid didn’t do anything, the mouth just reckoned that it was time he gave this one kid a biot of abuse.
The mouth kept pushing and pushing. all through P.E. the mouth kept saying things and calling this kid everything under the sun.
Eventually, when we were getting changed after our showers, the kid popped. I swear, It was like the scene from Carrie, when she is standing at the door of the Gymnasium. The kid had had enough. This Kid had barely said anything to the class, a real quiet studious kid. anyway, The kid went, as we say, “Radio Rental”. Kneed the Mouth in the nuts, and when the Mouth, doubled over, he recieved the most almighty wedgie that I have ever seen.
The mouth never bothered that kid again. I still laugh at the sight of that bully wincing in pain at the elastic went places that elastic was not meant to go.
I was in high school in Illinois in the early 70’s. I don’t know about now, but then the state had a graduation requirement involving swimming a short distance. So, freshman and sophomore years we had 2 weeks of swimming in gym class. Two weeks of NAKED swimming. Two weeks of about 60 guys swimming naked for an hour. It was pretty bad. I’m not sure of the logic behind this. I’d like to think there was some altruistic motive, but it was probably based on the school saving money some way. Talk about quickly establishing the pecking order (nudge nudge wink wink, know what I mean?)…
We had forced showers after Jr. High and Sr. High. Although shower isn’t the right word. we had a 30 foot long room that was about 10 feet wide, with openings at either end. As long as you walked out of the end naked you got a towel. If you had a towel you could leave the locker room, if not you got detension. So basically our showers were walk to the shower room, drop your drawers sprint, through the showers, grab a towel, and try to get back to your underwear before they got thrown into a urinal.
The worst time was 7th grade. We had swimming class half the year, and my hour it happend to be at the same time as the 9th grade girls. We would always have these strange swimming drills in boy-girl pairs that ended up in contact(I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this). 7th grade guy having lots of accidental bodily contact with atractive partially developed 9’th grade chick in bathing suit. More often than not the soldier was at attention, which wasn’t a problem underwater, but then the class ended and we were faced with the problem of shower time, and I’m sure everyone can understand the horrible fear of sporting wood in the 7’th grade boys shower. And in seventh grade there there is very little control, and the more you want it to go away, the more it won’t. That was the most traumatic time of my life. The march back from the swimming pool into the locker room(hunched over as much as possible, since the flimsy fabric of swimming trunks flexes easily into the tent shape). The coach blocking the path to our clothes to force us to head into the shower after removing the trunks. The only available option was to dive into the toilet stall, and wait for it to go subside, or at least until everybody else had left the shower room.
I’m telling you there was definite shrinkage!!!
I only had to shower my freshman year of HS. (I went to a 4 year HS) It wasn’t so bad except………
Well, I have a birthmark on my bum. Someone noticed it the first day and I ended up basically mooning all the other guys in my class so they could all take a look. After doing that I really wasn’t embarrassed by the showering thing.
I took tennis (no dressing out) in 8th grade, and ROTC* all 4 years of high school. The only gym classes I had were in 6th and 7th grade, and showers were optional. I don’t know of anybody that ever took one, though.
[sub]*–Yes, it’s technichally JROTC, but we never bothered to say the J because it’s implied by the high school bit, and is really unnecessary.[/sub] 