Gang Showers

I think it must be a by gone locker room mentality that brought about the idea of gang showers. Think of a room with a drain in the floor and multiple shower heads spaced about the walls without even the hint of privacy. I doubt you could get insurance on a building with one now. People would be afraid of assault or abuse and of course there is the latent homophobia thing, "Is he checking out my butt?" No the modern male may be secure enough to get a manicure and have more hair products than a woman but he doesn't want to walk into a room with a bunch of wet nekkid men.

SO what brings this up? Further thought on the Sale of Owasippe Scout Reservation had me thinking more upon my years as a staff man and I came across another benign anecdote I feel free to relate.

So a couple weeks into the summer when I was 17 years old the dining hall director was fired or quit. I don't remember and its not important. The thing is it left a spot open and I decided to call my little brother to see if he wanted to come up and spend four weeks working at camp. The job was pretty easy. Make sure the scouts set up properly for meals and clean up and then on the weekends he was responsible for stripping and waxing the floor. With some reluctance my brother agreed to come to camp.

The only cabin spot left when my brother got to camp was with a counselor in training who we shall refer to as the idiot. You can tell by the name I choose to refer to the young man as that he wasn't very bright, but on top of that he was pretty lazy too. He had a habit of ducking out of work and heading up to the staff living area to hang out.

So one Saturday afternoon my brother had just finished stripping and axing the dining hall floor and he was filthy. He decided to head up to the living area to get cleaned up before the rest of the staff got back from setting up the camp sites for the next weeks campers. The idiot, had checked out a troop of scouts that had taken their time about getting ready to leave and rather than reporting to the crew of staff who were moving tents and cots for the next weeks campers he had snuck back to the living area to take a shower.

So my brother gets back to the living area and notices that not only is the cabin unlocked, but that his toiletries are missing. The idiot had taken not only his shampoo and conditioner, but his bar soap. Just as my brother is making his discovery some of the older guys were getting in as they had finished their work and he told em what he thought had happened, namely that the idiot had taken his toiletries and he couldn't remember ever seeing the idiot owning any soap of his own. So they march up to the bathroom swing open the door to the gang shower and there he is wearing only his birthday suit, lathering himself up with my brothers bar of soap. He wasn't even using a wash cloth.

The idiot couldn't understand why my brother would be so angry because after all he didn't wash, "down there." Yes he said this in front of a bunch of men. Not smart. My brother told him to keep the soap and that he might as well clean any part he feels he has to clean. For the rest of the summer everyone would ask him, "Did you wash down there yet?" That was the idiots first and last summer at Owasippe. I suppose now he would have a law suit for having been traumatized in the gang shower.

In summary: Gang showers are scary and wrong. Proper etiquette dictates that one must use a wash cloth when borrowing bar soap. Always make sure you clean down there.

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