It’s been a while since visiting this website. Since then, I’ve spent many hours writing an essay titled "My Rite-of-Passage in “61.”
What brought me back was a search query re:a YMCA TV jingle from the early "70’s urging viewers to "…le-e-e-ar-r-n how to swim at the Y-y-yMCA. There was more one web listing on this particular ad jingle & it appears your website has received more than one recollection of it. I’m old enough to recall a dolphin on it, with the opening lyric “If you like the water, then you really otter…” (a play on the words:ought to) followed by the above lyric. I never took swim lessons at the “Y”, but did at the local city pool in LaCrosse, WI for 3 summers, starting in 1961. Though I never became a good swimmer the City bathhouse, built in 1938 as a W.P.A. project, forced a rite-of -passage on me I didn’t look forward to - havin’ to disrobe in front of strangers. Sharing a bath with my brother was one thing, but(t), to use a pun, havin’ to strip down to your “birthday suit” in front of rowdy boys from the working class was intimidating. Moreover, my physical development hadn’t hit full stride. Not only was it a “collective” changing area, it was open to the sky, probably to prevent moisture/humidity from the open group showers creating mildew. Years after that bathhouse was built, the local college erected a student union building in close proximity to it. I’m certain anyone one the upper floors/roof of that student union had a good view of that changing area! Mother once asked if I’d be willing to take swim lessons at the “Y”, adding that I"d have to learn naked. For an undersized 11 year old, that was a non-starter. But(t) other kids in my neighborhood did take lessons at the “Y” - in the buff! One of ‘em told me a kid in his swim class had an “accident” in the pool. As ya’ know poop floats awhile before sinking; it must’ve floated long enough for the other boys to notice. They must’ve laughed as John did tellin’ me this story. But I guess the instructor didn’t, back then they didn’t have the self-esteem movement to molly-coddle boys. The swim instructor ordered “bowel-movement boy” to swim to the bottom to retrieve his now sunken stool Since he needed both hands to tread water John said he resurfaced with his poop in his “pie-hole!” Anyway, that “rite-of -passage” I underwent in "61 prepared me psychologically for group showers in high school then later, as a draftee, in the Army.