Wednesday, November 16, 2011

It Is Time to Say This.

Given the Penn State University scandal, I have to say my own bad experience.

I got over it (I thought), and it never SEEMED to bother me too much, but I've been thinking about it lately.   It always seemed a bit weird.  I can only hope someone out there can corroborate my strange experience,

The first year I attended  The University of MD, I took Physical  Education class.  We played tennis, football, etc.  I have good memories of that football.  I was a small guy lined up against very bigger guys.  I crashed at them as hard as I could.  One of the big guys even said afterwards, I was the hardest hitting little guy he ever met.  I did what I could. So I was pleased with the physical education class,

The next is going to sound weird.  Part of the Pys Ed class involved swimming and diving,  The  teacher/coach ordered us not to wear bathing suits.  Because "the lint in the bathing suits was a problem".  OK, I would know that was wrong today.  I didn't then.  An adult guy told us to do it and we did.  All the other guys went along.  I did too because they did.

We swam and dove naked for 2 weeks in the pool.  There was no inappropriate touching, but it was still wrong.  I am angrier today about it than I was then.  I wish now that I had gone to the Dean of the College.  And I am starting to understand that it bothers me more to this day than it did then.  It was all more wrong than I could understand at the time.  I feel guilty that I didn't say anything at the time.  I know now that that was dumb.

I/we weren't molested directly.  But being watched naked for a couple weeks had an effect on me,

And it may not be an accident that I suddenly have hiccups....  This has begun to bother me many days and nights.

I had to finally tell about it to try to get it out of my mind.

Who should I talk to?

1 comment:

Just Ducky said...

Mum says at her high school the boys always did swimming naked, girls got suits to wear that the school provided. Very old and poorly fitting. Only when they went to some co-ed classes did the boys finally wear suits to swim and they provided their own. This is 40+ years ago.

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