Later that morning, we got ready for our first pool period. I was suddenly stabbed by a shocking realization: all I had brought with me were a few coins for candy and my registration paper. I had forgotten to bring a bathing suit or a towel. In a panic about what to do, I hurried up alongside Dexter as we walked toward the locker room.

“Dex!” I said in a hoarse whisper. “I didn’t bring a bathing suit!” Then I noticed that he didn’t have one either.

He shook his head. “That’s OK. We don’t need suits.” That relieved my mind a bit. I figured that the Y would provide them.

Herman, already dressed in plaid swimming trunks, led us to a row of lockers, told us to pick one, memorize the number and put our clothes inside. I was next to Dexter and I waited to see what he was going to do. Dexter was an aggressive, outgoing person who wasn’t afraid of any situation. That’s why I liked him. He was everything I wasn’t.

When I turned to follow his lead, I was startled to see that he was already stark naked and stuffing his clothes into his locker. I whispered frantically to him, “Where do we get the bathing suits?”

He looked at me as though I was mentally deficient. “We don’t wear suits in the pool, jerk! I already told you that!”

Thunder rumbled in my head. I was exceedingly self-conscious about my body at this age. So much so, in fact, that when my mother took me to see her female chiropractor, I refused to take off my undershirt and the doc had to manipulate my bones through my clothing. Now they were expecting me to take off my pants? In Public? I looked for the door, wondering how long I would have to wait for the next #16 bus home.

Herman came by and cut off my escape. “Hurry up, George,” he said in his lazy way, “you can’t go in the pool with your clothes on.”

He called everyone “George” or “Freddie” because he was incapable of remembering names. I looked at him and asked a desperate question: “Can’t we wear suits if we want to?”

“Nope,” he said matter-of-factly. “The lint clogs the drains. We swim au naturel at the Y. You don’t want to be a sissy, do you?” His challenge confused me because he and the other staff members were wearing bathing suits.

By this time, the rest of the boys were running around the locker room as naked as babes, the working ends of their plumbing flapping in the breeze. The idea of having to live through a moment like this had never occurred to me in my wildest nightmares.

“I don’t want to go swimming today,” I told Herman miserably.

“You don’t want to miss swimming,” he said with a gleam in his eye. “Boys who don’t want to go swimming get tossed in the pool, clothes and all.”

“OK,” I said, somewhat relieved. I thought he was giving me an alternative.

“But then,” Herman continued, “we have to hang those clothes up to dry, so you’ll end up going to lunch in your birthday suit.”

It kept getting worse, like a slippery descent into hell. Almost all the boys had taken their showers and were already headed for the pool. Herman was still hovering over me, waiting. Looking at his determined expression, I finally gave in and stripped. He walked me to the shower stall, an open area in which a dozen other boys were lathering up, and he watched as I joined them. The water was quite hot, which relaxed me at first, but it also cheered up my little fellow and made him proud. I was horrified. I ran to the shelf where the towels had been piled, but by that time they were all gone. With nothing to cover my embarrassment, I tried to hide among the others as we made for the pool. Herman, however, standing by the pool door, noticed my condition, smiled, and saluted.

We stood in three rows – I slouched in the middle of the back line – until they sorted us out into swimmers and non-swimmers. Then I raced for the shallow end where the instructors had ordered other non-fish like me to assemble. There were only a few, but I was surprised to find Dexter among them. Since he knew how to swim, I asked him what he was doing there.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” he whispered uneasily. “I should have gone in the locker room.”

“Just go in the pool,” I counseled him. “No one will know.”

He looked at me for a long moment, and then an expression of pleasure spread over his face. He turned and swam toward the deep end, looking back toward me long enough to call, “Good luck!”

I was content to stay where I was, bobbing up and down in water that came up only to my chest. That is, until I saw something floating on the surface a few feet away. At first I thought someone had thrown one of the hotdogs from lunch into the pool, but then I realized what Dexter had done.

It was not the number I had in mind when I suggested he relieve himself!

I started to scream at him, then realized that, since I was the only one near it, someone might associate it with me. I tried to move to the opposite side of the pool, but my efforts must have created an undercurrent because it began following me. In a panic, I struggled to reach the ladder, but every time I looked back it appeared to be gaining on me.