Things Not to Do in a Communal Showering Environment

February 6, 2015Tonya Lanthron 2 Comments

I go swimming at the “Y” in the mornings before work- partially for health reasons and partially for sanity reasons. It’s a stress relief most days, and gets my joints moving.

Most of the time I have a quiet and uneventful morning. I get there at 5:30 when they open so I can do my laps and strength training in the pool. Then I shower, dress and get ready to go to work all right there in the locker room, which keeps me from having to deal with babysitting Jerry in the mornings instead of getting my own stuff done. It’s a lot more efficient than trying to go home and shower and put makeup on while Jerry is doing his morning shitting, showering and shaving in the same bathroom.

Most of the time I am one of the first ones in the shower. I try to be very conscious of those around me. I try to take my shower quickly, efficiently and with the least amount of distraction. All I want is to get clean, get dressed, and get out. I do dress behind the curtain as I believe there are some things no one wants to see in the light of day, things which include my unclad ass hanging out of a towel.

We do have a few rude girls in the showers though, and there are things I observe that I consider to be very poor shower etiquette.

The Moaner:

I know it feels good to take a nice hot shower. The problem is when you choose to articulate your satisfaction with the hot shower by moaning like the girls’ gym teacher in that scene from Porky’s. Did you bring your dildo to the shower? It sure sounds like it. Does being in a communal shower with others of the same gender turn you on? That is creepy beyond words. I have to wonder- but please- keep those kind of noises to yourself.

The Doucher:

Some people do rinse out their hair with vinegar, which to me is sort of weird, but it’s even weirder if that vinegar smell from the next shower over is from someone doing the douche. If your nether parts get that skank nasty just from a morning work out, there is probably something funky going on down there that Summer’s Eve is NOT going to fix. I’m all about feminine hygiene, but that’s one of those kinds of things that should get done at home. Better yet, if in spite of regular bathing, the old cooter keeps on smelling like last week’s catch was left out in the sun,

you might want to seek medical attention of some sort.

The Streakers:

I don’t want anyone in the locker room to see me naked. It’s more courtesy than anything else. I don’t want to see any female naked. I would make an exception for hot, buff dudes. I would assume that most women really don’t want to see other women naked either, and if you are one of those women who like to stare at other women naked, I don’t want to be the one giving you a thrill. So the courteous thing to do is not to run around the locker room “clad in naught but air,” or with nothing on but a towel that leaves your ass hanging in the wind. The little cubby in front of the shower with the curtain is there for a reason. Get dressed behind it after you shower, so nobody has to see you naked.

Of course, bodily noises in the shower are always in bad taste. I know sometimes farts slip out, but it is possible to take a shower without cutting a few big, lusty, long, juicy rippers all during it. It also is possible to get through a shower without hawking up a lung, or blowing one’s nose (that is just a nasty thing to do in the shower.)

The last thing I want to worry about in the shower is sliding around on someone else’s snot. I wear shower shoes, but still.

Fire and Brimstone, Faith for the Cynical, and Unpopular Moral Absolutes

August 9, 2012Tonya Lanthron 1 Comment

Crucifixion was not this pretty.

I’ve spent an inordinate amount of my life researching theology. I am wired in such a way that it’s difficult to take anything on faith. The way that I’m wired, I generally default to Murphy’s Law. The sad part of that is I’m right way too much of the time when I take my own default and assume the worst.

That might have been the reason why I was terrified of everything when I was a kid. A good deal of my unrelenting fear was justified. I did get my ass kicked a lot. But I also had a certain knack for imagining the worst in a situation, like when Dad’s weirdo friends thought that I enjoyed swinging upside down while being grabbed by the ankles. All I could imagine, other than sheer terror, was the ass pilot letting go and my sorry carcass flying clean through the picture window. I don’t like too many people grabbing at me to begin with, but add the elements of my poor balance, centrifugal force, height, and a moderately shady character, and I am good and truly freaked. Perhaps it is a good thing that I have to be on the verge of death before I can puke. Then again, if I would have spewed a good one (after eating Spaghetti-os or something else colorful, like lime sherbet) perhaps Dad would have prohibited his buddies from repeating this torture.

Come on down to the Baptist Tent Revival! Music! Fun! However, no dancing, and no liquor will be served.

In Christian traditions the Pentecostals and Baptists get a bad rap for fire and brimstone sermons, but the Pentecostals and Baptists have nothing on the old-school Catholics. Pentecostals and Baptists could “get saved” and then they’d have a “get out of hell free” pass. In traditional old-school Catholicism, you don’t just “get saved.” God is keeping score, and hellfire awaits the person who Dies In Sin. The only way to clear your slate is to go to Confession and then do whatever Penance the priest assigns you. It was always better to get a laid back priest who would give you easy Penance. Father Furey was everyone’s favorite because he was pretty easy on the small stuff and he had a sense of humor. The other ones could be downright scary and mean about it and you’d be saying Hail Marys and Our Fathers for days.

Yes, you are headed straight to Hell for setting your Mom’s tape deck to the “Like a bat out of helllll!” portion of the Meatloaf tape. And for flipping the bird at the bug eating kid at school, and for calling your sister an “asshole.” You get to be bunkies with Beezelbub unless you say 400 Hail Marys, 1000 Our Fathers, and clean the toilet with your toothbrush every day for a month without being asked to do it.

It was usually my luck to end up with whichever priest hated kids the most.

The worst thing about Confession is that it would only be a matter of minutes before sin would rear its ugly head again. Almost everything I did or thought could be considered a sin, so it was a vicious cycle. Sin-confess, sin-confess, etc. and so on.

Mom was really good at dragging us kids to Confession at least once a month if not more often. I understand her logic- because if a Catholic Dies In Sin, you at the very least get time in Purgatory, and at the very worst, if you have a Mortal Sin on your scorecard, you go Straight to Hell. And you don’t have to actually do the Mortal Sin- you just have to want to.

I can admit I never had this problem. I always had plenty of sins on my plate.

Sins were everywhere when I was a kid. Using swear words- even the word “fart”= sin. Taking the last fish stick on the plate= sin, unless you were sure no one else wanted it. Giving my sister’s Barbies buzzcuts= definite sin. Hanging out in the farmer’s field behind the houses across the street (even though the farmer had a 12 gauge and dogs and he and his dogs would chase kids if he saw them) was also a sin.

So by the time I was about five I was terrified of sin, and even more terrified of Mortal Sins even though at age five I had no idea what “adultery,” “fornication” and “apostasy” truly meant. I did know if anyone was going to die with Mortal Sins, it would be me, even if it’s not even really clear to me at that point what they are, and I would probably be on the toilet, which means I’m partially naked, and being naked is a sin too. I had some pretty scary logic as a child.

Believe me, Catholic kids were taught a lot more about hell than one might think, at least back in the day. At least on the rare occasion Mom would let us go with Grandma to the Baptist Sunday School (it amazed me she ever did, because at that time Protestants were considered “heathens,”) we sang “Jesus Loves Me” and made crafts with popsicle sticks. I always wondered why Jesus loved us at the Baptist church, but at the Catholic church he lived in the little gold box on the altar -when He wasn’t out making rounds with His scorecard, marking down our sins.

I’m surprised that I ended up having any kind of faith at all, but that is where the grace of God comes in.

The apostle Paul, (who strikes me as a fellow rational thinker) in his letter to the Philippians, puts it as “working out your own salvation with fear and trembling…for it is God Who is at work in you.” (Philippians 2:12-13) God, not me. God, not inept leaders. God, Who isn’t primarily occupied with keeping score, or for sending people to hell for having naughty fantasies about Steve Perry in spandex, or for having the bad fortune of being on the toilet and partially naked at the hour of death. The challenge is to slow down and listen to God’s voice- not my own, and not the talking heads. It’s not as easy as one might think.

Yes, he did have one hell of a voice!

It’s comforting for me to understand I’m not in charge, and neither is Mr. Murphy, no matter how much Murphy’s Law seems to prove itself out.

I do believe in the perseverance of the saints, though maybe not in a strictly Calvinist sense, (I’m not a Calvinist but I do agree with certain elements of Calvinism) because it’s God doing the transforming, or the saving, if you will. It’s not about me trying to be good- because I’m not. If I had to explain my theological position it would be that of Molinism. God knows, but I don’t, if you take it to its Cliff’s Notes version. It’s OK that there are some things I’m just not going to understand.

Even though I believe that salvation is by the grace of God and is not contingent upon how much penance I attempt to do, there are still absolutes. The rules are there for a reason- mostly to act as boundaries to keep us from doing more damage to ourselves and others than we would were we left unfettered.

Anarchy always fails. While it might sound good to have freedom from rules, when society breaks down it’s not a good thing. Simply take a look around and see what all the drugs and violence and thievery have led to. Free love bought society broken families, rampant VD and AIDS. The decline of traditional social mores and the prevailing moral free-for-all where there are no absolutes has turned society into a freak show, that I can’t necessarily say is a good thing.