Backside about

28^th January 2010

Despite the newness of the year, I find myself treading the well-worn paths of familiarity, engaging in the same old activities. I’m still eating and sleeping (skills which I appear to have polished to a level of mastery), cooking, cleaning, answering questions about why the earth spins and how electricity works (to which I always give interesting answers….) and driving kids around to their designated extra curricular activities.

Which is what brought me to the local pool yesterday, to the scene of a crime (cue dramatic music). Well, that may be a little theatrical, as it was probably a crime against fashion more than anything, but was a shocking experience - for which I may need psychological intervention - none-the-less.

The younger boys and I sat down on the pool-viewing steps to watch my eldest partake in the ‘swim fun’ class (which he continually assures me is a far cry from actual fun). I did notice the neat pile of clothes next to us - not an unusual occurrence – which we later discovered belonged to an elderly, if somewhat spritely, man.

The said man sprung with unusual gaiety from the pool in front of us, grinning and dripping (a disturbing combination at the best of times), and headed directly for us.

I realised in a flash (I took that line from one of my grade three compositions) that one of my boys was sitting atop what could be none other than this man’s clothes.

But what was he wearing? Was he wearing anything at all? A glimpse of the full frontal view suggested not! But phew, he was wearing…beige coloured Speedos? What on earth? Did he have those babies custom made?

He continued to walk towards us; I surreptitiously pulled my boy off the clothes and drew him closer, not wanting to alarm the man in the nude coloured bathers.

He was upon us.

‘Have you ever seen such a thin slip of a lad?’ were his words to me, as he pretended to flex his muscles and laugh at his own joke. Was he trying to impress me? This guy had to be eighty. He absolutely was thin, but I’m quite sure lads do not have that much loose skin hanging grimly off bone and sinew.

I gave a nervous chuckle.

He was wearing his togs inside out. The backs were navy; the modesty lining exposed to the world.

I had a bit of a chat to the old guy and he was a lovely. But I could not quite shake the embarrassment both for him and myself (aka: the woman socialising with the guy in the inside-out bathers….).

As he walked away, I wondered at which point he would realise his mistake. When he got into the change room? When his greeted his wife when he got home? Seriously, he was going to die of embarrassment! Well, hopefully not literally…

As I pondered this guy, I felt sad that I had been mortified by his error and unable to look past social conventions in order to fully enjoy engaging with another human being. The more I look at society, the more apparent it is to me how much power these arbitrary conventions have over our thinking and actions. Has the creation of a perhaps necessary set of community rules extended way beyond what is helpful, even edging our thinking into the turbulent waters of discrimination?

It looks as if 2010 is going to continue in the theme of questionably dressed older men for me. My goal is to add to the mix a sprinkling of counter-cultural active thought. I might even start wearing my bathers inside out, just for fun.

You know you’ve got kids when:

1. You have a technique for extricating playdough from a nostril.
2. You can catch vomit in one hand.
3. You have to vacuum your chairs.
4. You call McDonalds a ‘restaurant’.
5. You are prepared to exit the shower and bolt outside in a towel because you thought you heard screaming.
6. You have discovered broccoli in your pot plants.
7. You can recite any Disney movie, from any place in the script, with no preparation.
8. You are willing to pay in excess of $50 for a babysitter for a few hours out of the house alone.
9. You say ‘no’ more often than any other word in the English language.
10. You know how to sneak chocolates from the pantry without anyone seeing.
11. You can wipe someone’s bottom without throwing up.
12. You blend vegetables before you add them to a meal.
13. You cover up semi-serious flesh wounds with a bandaid.
14. You haven’t been to the toilet alone for at least 6 years.
15. You have no idea what you have in your shopping trolley when you get to the checkout.
16. You see mealtimes as a sport, which may possibly lead to injuries.
17. You have said, ‘Don’t make me come back there’ whilst driving and wildly swinging your hand into the back of the car, attempting to assert justice.
18. You have found a container full of dead lizards in your Tupperware drawer.
19. You have had to answer the question ‘why do you have to sit down to wee?’ in public.
20. You have contemplated duct taping a child to a chair.