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Comment by imjk | Hacker News Reader

I remember nothing worse in High School than waking up showering and getting dressed for school, only to have PE class first period.

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Ah, that is a bummer. My high school allowed us to take PE in the summer, for a couple weeks. It was only, maybe, a few hours a day. That way when school started we already had credit for it and none of us smelled awful (well most of us anyway).

What was so traumatizing about the showers available to you in high school? Because I certainly remember first period gym, and I just took a shower afterwards. Then I was right as rain.

Probably the effort of getting ready once and then having to get ready again. Not traumatizing, just a pain. Some people are particular about their routines.

All people are particular about their routines. Some to greater degrees than others.

Are you familiar with the phrase: "There are two types of jobs, those you shower before, and some you shower afterwards."

What's that have to do with routine?

You shower after manual labor jobs. That's just a matter of practicality.

Yeah, but that's at the end of the work day. Difference here. Though I just wouldn't shower in the morning.

I really have no idea what this side tangent is about.

I made a comment that getting ready twice in short order is a pain, which is why people wouldn't want to have PE first thing.

I don't see what any of this has to do with the difference in showering schedules between white collar and blue collar labor.

My dad worked in a factory and showered after he got home from work. That was the time of day that made sense because his work was hot and sweaty and dirty.

I suppose the idea could have been that you could have just not showered at all and showered once you were done with PE, but still unsure where this detour is headed.

It’s a class marker, a sign of social status. Sweating is shameful, as is being low social status. You don’t see your father’s job, which he showered afterwards, as something shameful but loads of middle class people would because they’re insecure in their social status, they associated with people of similar income but lower social status. People with much higher status don’t care because they don’t, there’s no chance of them being associated with those with lower status.

It’s an awkward time for many kids. Personally, I dreaded the experience.

Here's a secret: we all did.

But ask yourself this. Think back in time to those dreadful experiences and remember the people who didn't _appear_ to dread the experience.

Those people dreaded walking naked amongst their 14 year old peers as well, they just did a better job at convincing you that they dreaded it less than you.

You could even say that those were the victors who wrote your history.

Um, no. Other than some awkward jokes on the first few occasions, it was fine. Possibly this is because the school I went to was pretty new and didn't have any kind of established social hierarchy or bullying culture - it existed, but more as personal animosity.

I just laid out the derivative of your behavior, and then you said

"thats ridiculous, we quickly adapted over a short amount of time".

So, if I hear you correctly, what your saying is that as your understanding over time, lets call this du/dt, has a positive rate of change?

You're probably right though, the biggest trick Copernicus ever pulled was convincing everyone of heliocentricity by employing mathematics. We've been under the illusion ever since.

14 year old me made many decisions that don't seem particularly rational from the perspective of 14+<20-something> me.

People have different perspectives on these sorts of things.

Excactly. When I was about 4, paper cuts were the worst thing I could imagine. Now they are trivial.

It doesn't mean that 4 year old me was stupid because I thought they hurt so bad, it just means that I've experienced things that hurt much worse.

My school didn't allow us to use the showers after PE. First period PE meant you could either minimize your participation or be sweaty all day. The showers were only available for the sports teams after school.

Don't know how common that is.

I have never asked, but never saw anyone use the shower after PE at my school.

Middle school and high school kids can be viciously cruel and disgusting. Things that if done by adults would land them in jail and on a registry. Your school probably made the right call.

My middle and high schools both required showering after PE class. You had about 10 minutes to shower and dress after class. It was part of the grade actually, if you skipped the shower you got docked a letter.

As I recall it was because all the other teachers didn't want a bunch of sweaty smelly kids in their classes.

We all showered, and there was plenty of time allocated. This was in Sweden, though. Yet another weirdness about American schools...

At least in my high school gym class, you weren't given enough time at the end to both shower AND get to your next class on time.

It was partly social consequence, and party not wanting to be late for class. Since no one used the showers, the ones who did were usually considered weird or creepy. Even more so when the showers are open designed and you are naked in front of the entire locker room(high school only I think). The bigger half though is not wanting to be late for class. Most schools operate on a 5 minute timer between classes and even being a few seconds late is grounds for punishment. Being that you rarely ever get into the locker room and dressed back into your day clothes before the class is over, you're already pressed for time before you even consider using the shower.

Would partitioned showers help with this problem?

Middle schools already have partitioned showers. At least mine did, I imagine most others that have them do as well. The biggest issue with the showering are the time constraints. The social stigma is present, just in a minor fashion. Being late to class trumps all else.

My middle school did not. No doors on the bathroom stalls either.

The time constraints are imposed by a school administration that assumes you will not shower or does not want you to shower. The real problem is people are afraid of nudity.

Yep. When I went to high school, literally no one showered. I never saw a single person shower after gym class.

The thing that baffles me about it, is that if you're going to do physical activity like that, a shower after should be mandatory unless you are going home. Otherwise it's pretty gross. The result will be people not trying hard in gym, or people being unsanitary.

I guess this is all because we're ashamed of our bodies or afraid of sexual perverts? What the hell happened to us that we are this way?

I would have been afraid to shower in high school, the way it was. I have since showered in front of many strangers in the military and nothing bad has ever happened to me as a result. If you do have something odd happen, then that should be dealt with. But come on man, high school is not a prison. You are pretty safe to take a shower there.

tl;dr our society would rather be dirty and gross than see the naked bodies of our peers or be seen.

That's great. I showered and then continued to sweat for 2 hours though (I was massively obese). HS Gym was a nightmare.

Funny enough, I did lose the weight, and am in much better shape now, through activities that are the antithesis of HS gym (turns out riding a bike and swimming for my own pleasure beat the torture of team sports any day)

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