by Ronnie Reese

Created on: September 01, 2009

Recently, I joined a weight reduction program at our local fitness center. It's been great and it's actually helped me to lose 15 pounds.

Locker Room Nightmares

But the instructor informed us that for the program to work even better we needed to get involved with exercise. Oh no, I thought. That would mean I'd need to use a locker room. Locker rooms have never been designed with much privacy in mind.

Back in high school I remember open showers, and toilets with no doors on the stalls. When we went to play sports against Eagle, Colorado- they didn't even have stalls around their toilets.

Because I've always been overweight I remember getting tricks pulled on me in locker rooms that we just don't want to discuss here. Being snapped with a towel and also having my clothes hidden were two of the kinder things I had to endure.

Lockers These Days

Anyhow, I took a tour of the locker room facilities and was pleasantly surprised. The toilets had stalls around them, with doors. The shower stalls had curtains. And there were 6 shower stalls, not just 2 stalls like we 45 guys had to use in junior high. And besides this there were a lot of lockers.

At any rate I made a decision to start working out. On my first time walking around the track, the only person I passed up was this little lady using a walker. And she gave me a good run for my money. A short time later I was lapped for the second time by a gentleman nearly twice my age. (I'm about 50.) He let me know that the lady I had just passed was his wife.

Finally, exhausted and sweaty, I made my way to the locker room. Once there, I noticed that gentleman had the locker next to me. Shortly after this, another man came to the locker on the other side of me. There we were the three of us in tight quarters. There were over a hundred lockers in the facility and probably only 1/10 of them were being used at the time.

The lockers are about 10 inches wide, and we were about 20 inches wide on the average. I commented that the person who hands keys out at the desk must be playing a trick on us or else she really doesn't like us.

The elderly man replied, "No, they're just trying to help us out with our male bonding!" The three of us laughed.

He said he really hates it when they give him locker numbers 20 - 23 or 82 - 85. I looked to see why and noticed that those are corner lockers. I had to admit, I would be in a tight spot with those myself. When you have one of those lockers, you could end up with four guys in a very tiny amount of space. Until I lose another 50 pounds, that's a little too much male bonding for me!

If the person handing out the keys to the lockers would allow a little more space between people it sure wouldn't hurt my feelings!

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