How I Got Trapped in a Bathroom at the YMCA

The sequel to: How I Got Trapped in my Bra at the YMCA

I swim laps for exercise. It’s a good workout, I love the water, and while I’m doing it nothing hurts – which at age 44 with an osteoarthritic hip (sexy, I know) it’s getting harder to find an activity where that’s the case.

I was a swim team member as a kid and I can recall swim-a-thons where we hit fifty, sixty, and seventy laps in a night, but it had been years since I had that kind of endurance so when I rejoined the Y a year ago I was only swimming thirty, ten of which I was using a kick board.

Since then I’d been creeping up on laps. I hit forty, even fifty, but never the elusive sixty that signals a mile. Swimming a mile and walking a mile are very different things as far as one’s body is concerned.

So Wednesday when my sister asked me if I wanted to go for a late swim with her, I said sure and headed over early. She’s a lot faster than me so if I was going to hit sixty laps in the same time she could I’d need about a twenty or thirty minute head start. When she arrived I was almost thirty laps in and feeling good.

An hour into my swim I did it – I hit sixty laps! Technically the end tally was either sixty-two or sixty-four, I stopped a few times mid lane to adjust my goggles so the lap counter on my smart watch malfunctioned a couple of times.

I was elated! Also, I desperately had to pee.

I quickly exited the lap pool and went into the poolside bathroom. It’s a single, spacious unisex just a few steps away from the hot tub.

Blessed relief.

Now, if you are female and wearing a one-piece swimsuit there are two ways you can approach a bathroom break. You can yank the leg of your suit to one side, thus stretching out the material and running the risk of flashing a butt-cheek later on, or you can pull the entire sodden contraption off and basically be naked. I had opted for the latter, as butt-cheek flashing wasn’t high on my YMCA to-do list.

My suit is a racer-back, with cross straps and is also, I must add, a size too small for me. I order suits a size smaller than my pants size because I want them to fit snug and firm with nothing flopping around.

As I stood I realized, to my abject horror, that in the minute I’d been sitting there my arms had gone limp as noodles, all strength completely drained away. Simultaneously, the soaked fabric of my swimsuit had turned into an impenetrable rolled knot of fabric, strangling my upper thighs.

I pulled, I tugged, I wrestled, using arms that felt about as strong as those of a wee newborn babe.

Eventually the terrible reality dawned on me and I stood there for a moment, dripping and horrified.

I was trapped. Naked. And unlike the last time I’d gotten into a predicament like this there would be no kindly, long-suffering stranger to rescue me.

Outside the door was the lap pool, with it’s fifteen-some-odd of my fellow male and female YMCA members (including my sister) blithely carrying on their workouts with no idea of my plight. There was also a good fifty feet of freezing hallway standing between me and the sanctuary of an appropriately naked locker room space.

They would not, I thought, appreciate a portly, pale flasher running by. Notwithstanding the fact that I could only toddle, not run, with the fabric of my suit knotted about my legs.

In desperation I took the suit off and rung it out, thinking perhaps if it were dryer and not rolled over itself this would be easier. Alas, that meant I now had to start the process all over from the beginning.

I shimmied, I yanked, I jumped and pulled in at the same time, using gravity and momentum to inch my sodden swimsuit up over my panicked body bit by excruciatingly tiny bit. All the while I was wondering if my sister was concerned about why I’d now been in here so long and exactly how long I would need to be missing before somebody came looking and thus revealed the mortifying truth.

Quietly, my workout tracker pointed out that my pulse had gone a bit high. Yes, no kidding, I silently responded to it – I AM TRAPPED NAKED IN A PUBLIC UNISEX BATHROOM, WHAT EXACTLY DO YOU EXPECT?

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the suit was at least up over all the necessary bits. Crooked, twisted, cutting off circulation to my left breast and right buttock, but blessedly, mercifully up.

I limped over to the end of my sister’s lane and waved to get her attention, telling her I was headed to the showers. I then disappeared into the relative solitude of the ladies locker room before she could do more than give me a puzzled look over why I’d been gone so long. Or looked so pink. And disheveled.

And that’s how I got temporarily trapped naked in a bathroom at the YMCA.

 

15th Wedding Anniversary

"I didn't fall in love with you.

I walked into love with you, with my eyes wide open, 
choosing to take every step along the way.

I do believe in fate and destiny, but I also believe we are only 
fated to do the things that we'd choose anyway.

And I'd choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, 
in any version of reality, I'd find you and I'd choose you."

From The Chaos of Stars by Kiersten White

That Awkward Moment You Realize Your Dad's in the Illuminati

Just before Christmas my Dad asked me to carry and deliver a trophy for him to someone at the company where I work.

It’s a bronze cup, 103 years old, engraved with the name of the organization and the names of all the previous winners over the past century. There’s a silver and a gold cup too (and possibly others) and the others are worth considerably more than the bronze I’d been asked to deliver.

The organization is called ‘The Mixers Club’, and they consist of the movers and shakers of Philadelphia industry who get together now and again to play golf, eat and drink fine food and drink, and decide how things are going to shake out insofar as local business is concerned.

In short, they’re our local branch of the Illuminati.

And my dad is one of them.

So I did what I thought was the only proper thing having come into possession of one of their holy relics; I captured it pirate-style on behalf of the office grogs of the world. Currently, I’m using it to decorate my cubicle. I had a Santa hat on it for Christmas, which was quite charming.

So far there’s been no backlash on account of my theft, but if you don’t hear from me for an extended period of time then I’ve probably been… grrrk…

Fnord.

Holiday Disordered Eating

On Halloween night I went out trick or treating with my friend’s daughter. Since she’s ten, she’s still young enough to want to do a stiff-limbed Frankenstein run up and down the street with me and would dutifully holler out, “Exterminate!” when I called after her to remember her catch phrase (she was dressed as a Dalek).

Ten year olds these days are hard to scare though. One house had gone all out with a full cemetery in the front yard, strobe lights, and creeping ghouls one had to dodge past in order to earn candy. She calmly explained to the ghoul that after playing Five Nights at Freddy’s nothing much scared her anymore. The ghoul just looked at me and shrugged.

It was a great time, and my Halloween loving neighborhood did not disappoint.

The next morning, I perused this article over my morning coffee. It details the cost (in jumping jacks) of each piece of “fun sized” candy consumed with the expectation that repentant post-Halloween dieters will be killing ourselves over the next few days frantically trying to burn off the extra chocolate. God forbid we all enjoy a silly holiday without feeling extreme guilt over the consumption of treat food.

I shrugged and made myself a bowl of oatmeal.

I ate candy on Halloween night, dipping into my stash for the visiting kids enough times that I probably need to do jumping jacks straight through the rest of the week non-stop as supposed penance, but I really don’t care. I’ll go back to the gym as usual, and go about my normal non-chocolate consuming life. I'm not interested in using physical activity as punishment for enjoying tasty food. My Zumba and Yoga classes are for physical fitness, relaxation and fun.

I remember being in weight loss support groups and garnering applause for suffering through Halloween without eating a single piece of candy, but I’m done with that all or nothing thinking now. I don’t consume candy most days, having it perhaps once every couple of months. Neither am I going to self-flagellate for my supposed ‘badness’ on days that I do. I will enjoy Halloween, and Christmas, and Thanksgiving, and Easter, and not spend those days stressing over whether I’ve managed to create a calorie deficit while celebrating. Nor am I plotting and planning a week in advance for how to at least break calorically even.

In our calorie dense environment restraint is necessary to think about, but holidays come only a few times a year, and they are to be enjoyed. Life is too precious to do otherwise.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Birthday

Ted,

I wish I could write poetry. You make me want to. I want to create beautiful things for you on this the anniversary of your birth.

The past fifteen years have flown past us, and I wish for fifteen hundred more. If there is one thing with which I've truly been blessed in this life, I know it to be love.

I love you, I'm so grateful for you, I will always always always be with you.

Happy Birthday, Bee.

-Bebe

****************************

If ever two were one, then surely we.

If ever man were loved by wife, then thee;

If ever wife was happy in a man,

Compare with me ye women if you can.

I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,

Or all the riches that the East doth hold.

My love is such that rivers cannot quench,

Nor ought but love from thee give recompense.

Thy love is such I can no way repay;        

The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.

Then while we live, in love let’s so persever,

That when we live no more we may live ever.

-Anne Bradstreet "To my Dear and Loving Husband"

How I got Trapped in my Bra at the YMCA

My sister has a membership at our local YMCA, so she can go swimming. We both love to swim. As kids, we were both on swim team for years, and she eventually became one of those teen lifeguards who hang out at the pool all summer long.

I would love a YMCA membership, but since it costs $60 / month and my Retro Fitness membership is only $20 / month with plenty of Zumba and Yoga included – the cheap Scotswoman in me wins out there.

Still, my sister gets occasional guest passes to the Y, so this week I went with her to swim laps and check out all the improvements they’ve been making over the last year.

Some things are new, like a lazy river, a little water slide, and lots of water-dumping buckets and fountains to fling H2O all over the place. Some things are just the same, like when you walk out of the pool area into the hallway that leads to the locker room. It may have seemed like a perfectly reasonable temperature when you went through there dry a half hour ago but has morphed with the presence of pool water into sub-arctic temperatures. Always refreshing.

Behold the new pool!

The other thing that hasn’t changed is how much faster than me my sister is. In about 30 minutes I did nine laps while she did… I don’t know – about fifteen? It’s hard to count when somebody is winging by you underwater like a swim cap-clad bullet. This is why she became swim team captain and a lifeguard and I became that kid who goes to art camp and learns how to decoupage.

Not that I’m competitive or anything.

When we got out I saw that I only had a half hour to get back home for an appointment, so while my sister headed into the showers I returned to the lockers to throw on my clothes so I could leave.

I had brought one of my simple sports bras – one that Champion calls, “The Great Divide” because it supposedly doesn’t cause uni-boob (please note this claim on their part is FALSE, at least for a user as gifted as I am). It looks like so:

On this particular day when I went to pull it on over my head as is its sole mode of entry, I neglected to take into account that though my skin had been briefly swiped with a towel to remove excess water droplets I was still wholly and entirely damp both from pool water and a light layer of post-lap swimming perspiration. This dampness caused the fabric of my sports bra to drag heavily against the skin, which as I yanked it over my head caused the back of it to roll several times over until it had turned into more of a spandex-y rope across my back than the Y shaped racerback configuration it’s supposed to have. Since I had also simultaneously shoved my arms through the armholes, my arms were suspended over my head in a rather useless fashion and the front was stretched so tight that it was sitting above my chest instead of properly covering it – meaning my boobs were out. Way out.

Before swimming we had used the weight machines, then did a solid half hour of crawling and backstroking and breaststroking. My arms were tired like limp noodles, and my bra had become a skin tight rope of rolled colorful fabric jammed just beneath my armpits.

I was trapped. Completely and totally trapped. With my boobs out.

Granted, the YMCA locker room is a naked place, no big deal, but I’m one of those shy people who tries to minimize the nakedness, even in naked-appropriate situations. This was not good.

I glanced to my left, where the showers were, pondering having to hustle across the locker room to obtain my sister’s help in my current state, with my arms trapped over my head and my chest just kind of swinging free. Eventually, once she’d stopped laughing, I was pretty sure she would help me.

As I pondered this, and continued to uselessly wiggle, while simultaneously starting to panic, I heard a very quiet, accented voice from behind me that said, “excuse me.” And then with a sharp, efficient yank, I was free! A total stranger had come up behind me and yanked flat the back of my sports bra, allowing me to pull the front into its proper place as well.

I turned around to thank the small, middle-aged Asian woman who had come to my rescue, and she merely gave me an efficient nod before going about her own business. Mentally I could picture her a minute before pondering my struggle from behind with a quiet, resigned sigh.

People helping other people out of nowhere, even in small, crazy, totally embarrassing ways – it reminds you that sometimes the world is an okay place to be.

Also, the new pool at North Penn YMCA is really spiffy.