old guy now - fond speedo memories

[jwkalpha]

I'm in my late 50's now - not in any kind of shape that a speedo looks good on me, and I'm rarely anywhere that I would wear them out in public anyway, but I still have a couple pairs as well as a large collection of very brief underwear and jocks that I wear all the time. I wore one on the beach at a resort in Mexico a couple years ago to yank my wife's chain - there were a fair number of Europeans at our resort, so older guys in speedos was not terribly uncommon. The folks we were with thought it was hilarious - my wife didn't notice for at least a couple hours that that was all I had on laying out under the palapa! I thought it was a hoot - she didn't.

It is hilarious to me at the change in generations since I was in high school 40 years ago and my son was in high school 8-10 years ago.

When I was in school, gang showers were the norm - jr high and high school locker rooms - nude shower after PE class and after-school sports, etc. Being naked in the locker room was never a big deal. We rarely wore towels around our waist - we were too busy drying our long hair while we were walking back to our locker. Yeah, there were the occasional guys that got hard-ons in the shower, and they were teased mercilessly and probably got a towel snap on the ass, but nobody really cared - it was just something to joke about and was forgotten an hour later.

I worked at scout camp during high school summers. Speedos were routine afternoon wear - swimming, canoeing, rowing, etc. If we were down in the aquatic area, speedos were the ONLY thing the staff were wearing - no trunks of any kind. Gang showers were it for the staff and campers alike. Campsites actually had an open air single shower that was used frequently. Again, nudity among guys was never a problem. Nobody cared. It was about 50 yards from the staff tent area to our shower building. Although we didn't do it in the middle of the day with all the campers around, with early morning or evening showers when there weren't a lot of people around, we were just as likely to be carrying our towel as wearing one. We had absolutely wicked speedo tans - especially the aquatics staff. Nothing but speedos all day. And these were thin speedos back then - single layer nylon with a front liner. My first pair were an orange paisley print (OMG!). Back then I actually had the body for it. I also had the body to look good in "Indian costume". Those of you who were in Scouts know that there is a lot of American Indian rituals tied in with some camp activities. During some of our ceremonies and activities, we wore loincloths or breech-cloths - and no underwear. The kids never saw it because of the lighting, but from the side, everything was noticeable. Hey, no speedos back in the 1800's! These costumes were pretty damn authentic.

In our dorm in college, we had the big bathroom/shower on each floor - the dorm was too old to have individual bathrooms. Again - nudity never a problem. Most of the time we carried our towels, never wore them around our waist. More likely than not, shaving and brushing our teeth were done nude. Nobody cared. We all did it. And our dorm mother (yes, we had one) knew better than to come up on the floors before 10am, because she'd likely find a naked college boy walking to or from the showers.

Fast forward 30 years. Showers at the high school? Individual stalls - and even then, some guys take showers in their boxers. Seriously? At all the local gyms - individual showers - and in most, towels are required in steam and sauna. WTF? Rarely will you see a naked guy in the gym locker room, and if you do, it's most likely an older guy like myself who was raised in an era where nobody cared about being naked among guys. In my son's college dorm, the gang showers had curtains added. Duh. The idea of seeing your buddy naked - totally routine and common when I was growing up - is now considered "too gay". That's the only thing I can figure out. And it's really wierd - in an age where porn of any variety is instantly available online (back in my day we had a hard time finding a discarded Playboy), the insane modesty of today's teens and young adults is just hilarious to me.