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.