why not?
I am thinking about joining the local Y. Part of this is my personal perversion, best illustrated by the fact that I don't understand most of the languages spoken in the sauna. Part of this is my more general proclivity towards working class chic--I grew up wearing clothing that arrived in enormous garbage bags on our porch from our cousins in Illinois, delivered annually by my mother's cousin who brought his 7th graders to the nation's capitol during spring break. Alternatively, and on special occasions, we shopped at Zayre's--a version of K-mart, though much lower on the totem pole, and, as far as I know, only on the East Coast. I googled Zayre's and found out that my recollection of the store precisely matches this anonymous person's childhood experience.
Basically, the store was filthy, the floors stretched for miles, and you knew it was low-fi because the colors, garish, did not exist in nature, and the lighting, florescent, felt like an on-coming seizure, and because there just wasn't much there--I recall expansive aisles, spaciously situated clothing racks (circular), and literally empty spanses of floor. I wore this clothing through middle school...
Compounding my perversity, I am drawn to the Y because it too belongs to a childhood pigeonhole in my memory-desk. We went to the Y many times a week--now that I am older, I recognize this for the transparent baby-sitting that it represented for my single mother of four. But then it was such a welcome break from the home--to be in the pool, moving through the water, doing flips, doing laps (my mother, bearing no small resemblance to a drill sergeant, had us doing 20 laps --that'd be 40 lengths-- by the age of 7 or 8). It was scummy, the floor always reeked of disinfectant, the locker rooms were tiny, permanently humid dank, poorly lit, mildewy spaces with lockers that didn't completely close and insufficient benches. It was always freezing as soon as we left the locker room, and we always had to wait an eternity for our mother to emerge, with her hair in rollers, from the locker room. This Y was completely bare bones: in addition to the pool and locker rooms, there was a great room, which one could rent for parties (imagine the streamer bedecked great room in local Baptist Churches--this was where most of our birthdays were celebrated after the age of 5, with the Rondald McDonald cake for my younger sister, and certainly later than middle-school, judging by the woven-lace barettes in my sister's hair). My mother, consummate bargainer, had managed to get a major discount (single mother, four kids) on our membership. We went there for years.
And yet, I find myself drawn to the Y, for it's unashamed messages posted in 2-foot hight letters on the wall (honesty, being the only slogan that I recall at the moment), for the generic basic features, and more specifically, for the diversity of people, ages, colors, classes and languages.
So nostalgia meets up with life ethos and I find myself, of all places, back in the world of my childhood.
Basically, the store was filthy, the floors stretched for miles, and you knew it was low-fi because the colors, garish, did not exist in nature, and the lighting, florescent, felt like an on-coming seizure, and because there just wasn't much there--I recall expansive aisles, spaciously situated clothing racks (circular), and literally empty spanses of floor. I wore this clothing through middle school...
Compounding my perversity, I am drawn to the Y because it too belongs to a childhood pigeonhole in my memory-desk. We went to the Y many times a week--now that I am older, I recognize this for the transparent baby-sitting that it represented for my single mother of four. But then it was such a welcome break from the home--to be in the pool, moving through the water, doing flips, doing laps (my mother, bearing no small resemblance to a drill sergeant, had us doing 20 laps --that'd be 40 lengths-- by the age of 7 or 8). It was scummy, the floor always reeked of disinfectant, the locker rooms were tiny, permanently humid dank, poorly lit, mildewy spaces with lockers that didn't completely close and insufficient benches. It was always freezing as soon as we left the locker room, and we always had to wait an eternity for our mother to emerge, with her hair in rollers, from the locker room. This Y was completely bare bones: in addition to the pool and locker rooms, there was a great room, which one could rent for parties (imagine the streamer bedecked great room in local Baptist Churches--this was where most of our birthdays were celebrated after the age of 5, with the Rondald McDonald cake for my younger sister, and certainly later than middle-school, judging by the woven-lace barettes in my sister's hair). My mother, consummate bargainer, had managed to get a major discount (single mother, four kids) on our membership. We went there for years.
And yet, I find myself drawn to the Y, for it's unashamed messages posted in 2-foot hight letters on the wall (honesty, being the only slogan that I recall at the moment), for the generic basic features, and more specifically, for the diversity of people, ages, colors, classes and languages.
So nostalgia meets up with life ethos and I find myself, of all places, back in the world of my childhood.
posted by aelis at 10:29 PM
2 Comments:
I have similar memories of the Y and the persistent dank humidity. The most vivid memory of mine is of my younger brother's lips turning blue from being in the freezing cold swimming pool for too long.
Ah yes, kids' blue lips...
There were two other constants at our Y: the awful and yet reassuring smell of lye and those curious chemistry sets that the guards brought out every few hours. Those both seem to have disappeared from contemporary pools.
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