Naked!

While traveling recently, I got to experience the airport body scanner where members of the Transportation Security Administration were able to see through my clothing and make sure I wasn’t carrying some sort of concealed weapon.  It was embarrassing and the entire ordeal reminded me of the embarrassment during my youth when I had to strut around school naked.

This is not that dream where you find yourself naked in front of all your coworkers and friends.  This was reality in Baltimore.

Just about every male has had the experience of the community shower at the gym:  the big room with shower heads positioned all around the room.  Memories of the film Porky’s come up at this point. 

There was the time in my youth at Gwynns Falls Jr. High School in West Baltimore when we were in that shower at gym and the school fire alarm went off.  All of us had to march directly outside without any clothing to wait for the “all clear.”  Insert gawks and stares from the rest of the clothed students.

And then there was the naked rule for swimming in Baltimore City Public School pools.

I am serious.

Here was the reasoning:  Clothing sheds in the wash. That’s why clothing looks a little more beat up with each washing.  

Someone in the Baltimore City Public School System, armed with this information, decided that the lint and fluff that was clogging up the filters of the city-owned swimming pools was from the swimsuits worn by the pesky students who swam in the pools.

The rule was made:  It would be a requirement for all students to swim naked in the Baltimore City Public School swimming pools.

The school board didn’t see a problem with this, since the boys and girls each had their own gyms and separate pools.

My high school, Baltimore City College, was an all-male school.  Across the street was Eastern High School, the all-female school.  There were always stories in the shower of the guys who ventured across the street and were able to somehow catch a glimpse of the girls’ swimming sessions.  This was long before cellphones where everyone carries around a camera, so the stories were passed along like folklore.

There’s no way something like this would happen in today’s society.  Can you imagine your kids coming home from school telling stories of how their swim coach was teaching them about the doggy paddle in the nude?

And I won’t even go into the breast stroke.