A Conversation on the Playground

By Dave in New Hampshire

The grass had finally turned green and the great leaves of the maple and oak trees had only just erupted from their buds after a long winter. The wet browns of spring had seemingly been banished over night as every bit of plant fiber shown with bright full green. The sun was warm and for the first time since the school year began back in august, it actually felt like summer.

Although the equipment and building were familiar, the playground seemed new and full of life. The younger students ran and jumped and chased. For the first time they did so without their spring jackets and hats. For a few weeks it had not been uncommon for kids to remove a coat during a vigorous game of tag or red rover, but everyone wore one initially because you were never sure how cold and wet it might become. Now however the sun was warm and bright and even the most skeptical child could play without worry of cold or damp.

However much the younger children were enjoying the flush of a new summer, my friends and I were not. Although still children we were soon to be graduated 5th graders. We had seen many summer before, twice as many as the youngest children. We had played and explored every facet of the playground over the previous 5 or 6 years and by now felt to old for it. Some of us, though we didn't dare speak of it, had started puberty and knew it. We also knew that our time in elementary school was very nearly over.

Although we were in fact still children, this may have been the first time my friends and I had felt old. We were the oldest students in school and on the cusp of what we were sure would be the major step to middle school, we didn't feel like kids, or at least not like little kids. Today we felt like young men with serious issues to discuss.

Perhaps out of that seriousness and a need to ascend above the mindless frolics of the 1st and 2nd graders, my friends and I climbed to the top of the most formidable structure on that 2-3 acre patch of decades old playground equipment. In the vernacular of this school, the three tiered wooden structure was known as "the climber". It was basically 3 square wooden platforms, each adjacent to each other and ascending in height. In kindergarten, it had seemed a castle. Even the middle platform was tall enough to walk under on my tippy toes and the tallest section has seemed a tower. One its side had stood a firemans pole that seemed terrifyingly tall and a balance beam running to a near by jungle gym. As young children we had run and chased each other all over this castle. And over the years it had stood the test of time. However though it stared sturdy, we had grown. Almost every 5th grader had to stoop to walk under the highest section and the only way under the middle was to crawl. The firemans pole and balance beam had been removed. Swept away by social forces we were not even remotely aware of. As we had grown the climber became a less viable play area and we had gravitated to other more open sections of the playground. The soccer and kickball field, the bleachers, the stump. But now on one of our final days in what had been the only school and life we had ever known we returned to the climber. Ducking and bending we made our way to the highest platform. Maybe we suddenly felt a nostalgia for the epic castle of our youth or maybe we just didn't want to be surrounded by snot nosed 2nd graders whos lack of motor skills probably had led to the demise of the fire mans pole. Either way, on this first day of summer and one of our last as children this is where we chose to talk.

There was a lot on our minds. We were just getting to that stage where you have rational thoughts, and our thoughts were on middle school. We had all seen the building a thousand times before. It was vast and large and made of dark brown brick (unlike the cheery red of the elementary schools). It was much taller and covered with irregular additions and addendums. Every morning the busses would collect us there from the far flung homesteads of this rural little town, and we would disembark to find the bus that would take us to our school. This was always in the morning with the foreboding middle school blocking out the rising sun to the east. In our minds the building always seemed dark and shadowy and its ability to swallow up hundreds of students (every one bigger than anyone in elementary school) seemed terrifying.

It wasn't just the outside of the building that worried us. We knew that we would be split up to join kids from the other 3 elementary schools. Kids almost none of whom we knew. We would have to learn to live with lockers, that ubiquitous feature of middle and high school that seemed so very mature compared to the cubbies and personal desks we had become used to. All of us worried about the multiple different teachers we'd have to navigate and deal with. Surely they would be more demanding and strict than any we had previously known. We wouldn't really be kids anymore but "middle schoolers" and the coursework was sure to be challenging. There would be the harder versions of subjects we already had tried, math and reading and science, but entirely knew ones. Band, health, shop. In addition to the new and different classes would be the sports. Some of us had played sports. Little league, maybe soccer or hockey. But sports in middle school were different, less play and more athletic. Track, Cross country, basketball, and the king of sports football. We felt we would all have to select one, even those among my friends who did not feel any really desire to play. It was just understood as a given that we would need to pick a sport and compete lest be be seen as losers and uncool. A similar calculus was being worked out for band instruments. Would you be a cool kid playing drums or saxophone, or a dork playing tuba or worse yet a gay guy playing flute or clarinet? (assuming you even knew what those were). There was a lot on our minds and it made all of use to varying degrees nervous. However one overarching issue gave us the most worry. This warm summers day in the spring of 1995 one horrifying eventuality loomed larger and darker than any other in our young minds. It wasn't war or disease or depression. Those were all things few people in my generation would have to think about, let alone deal with for many years to come. Although we had heard horror stories about shop classes and playing solos in band, those all seemed like manageable obstacles. What filled each of our insecure little tween minds was the dreaded communal shower.

Its funny how you pick things up culturally. At no point did anyone explicitly tell us that the first day in 6th grade, we would be required to strip naked and shower, perhaps were dozens of other guys, after gym class or an athletic event. We nonetheless all expected this. We had all seen the depictions in movies and TV. Locker room scenes that, while they rarely showed nudity, would imply with sound effects, towels and banter that showers were ongoing, regular and automatic. We had all been to college and community pools and summer camps and seen the big tiled rooms with the multiple open shower heads. Most of us had even been to the middle school locker room for one event or another over the years, and if we hadn't that last spring of elementary school we were bussed over for a middle school tour that included a visit to the gym and adjacent locker room. I did not see anyone showering but I saw the sweaty kickball players and I saw the wet tiled floor. Nobody had to say what would be happening in the minutes before the bell rang, we all knew and looked at each other in terror hoping to find reassurance.

Many adults in our lives had alluded to this eventually. When I was 10 my father caught me wearing my swim suit under my jeans on my way to a friends birthday pool party. When he asked why and I replied that I did not want to change in front of others, he made me take them off and said getting naked in front of other guys is normal. I did as he asked but made sure to change in a the most private corner and moment I could find when the time came to put them back on. Our elementary school gym teacher had started remarking how badly we needed showers in our later years. Indeed the bright red faces and sweat had started to offend senses other than our eyes by then. Although many of us were in denial, our BO wasn't going away or getting better. Although the gym teachers comments were made in jest, we all knew he had a point and that in middle school the facilities were there to add teeth to the threat.

"I wont do it" one friend declared. "I'll just splash water on my face from the sink" said another. Most felt they would just insist on wearing their swim suit or underwear. Those all seemed reasonable to me. My personal preference was to ask my parents to request I be given an exemption from taking gym, an otherwise required class. However being unable to articulate why I would need such an exemption and knowing how my father felt about it, forestalled me from taking this path. My friends suggestions seemed like good alternatives. We also started toying with idea of forming some form of refusal pact. However knowing we would be split up and not taking gym at the same time, this idea, though reassuring to think about seemed stillborn.

What was interesting was that despite all of us knowing we wanted to avoid showering, nobody could say why. None of us had bad previous experiences. The possibility of being recorded surreptitiously was remote at that point and not on any of our minds. Nor did anyone take the idea of abuse seriously. Not to deny that these things can and do happen, but nobody on the climber that day voiced such concerns or so much as hinted that they had them. I know I certainly wasn't concerned about such things. I just found the idea of being naked in front of other people, any other people totally terrifying. It was almost paralyzing and up until now I had done everything in my power to avoid it happening. When I took swimming lessons, I was always first out of the pools and in my undies before I had even dried off or the second fastest person had reached the locker room door. If by some happenstance I wasn't first, I would wait to be last, until every other person had gone. At boy scout summer camp later that summer, I'd simply not shower at all for an entire week. I knew the fear I felt and I could see it in my friends eyes as we stood there gravely considering our humiliating doom as the innocent children played and frolicked, blissfully far removed from the terrors of middle school life.