Yesterday I went to the swimming pool with four of the other language assistants - all of whom are girls. Strangely enough, I'm the only male language assistant in Gap. Two of them had talked about the pool a few days ago, and Tuesday night we decided to go as a group to check it out. It's a small public pool, but it's very clean. In fact it may be the nicest public pool I've ever been in.
So I showed up in my athletic shorts that double as swimming trunks, and a woman who works at the pool came over to me and said, "Le short n'est pas acceptable. Il est interdit ici. Tu dois porter un maillot de bain. Tu comprends?" (Shorts are not accepted. They are prohibited here. You must wear a bathing suit. Do you understand?).
I looked around and, of course, a 'maillot de bain' means a pair of speedos, which all of the other men were wearing shamelessly. I told her that I didn't have a 'maillot de bain' and that I always use my shorts for a bathing suit. She stuck to the policy but graciously informed me that she would look to see she could find an extra suit that I could borrow.
She came back a few minutes later with a tiny pair of bright blue speedos and said to bring them back to her when I was finished. I took one look at them and knew that this was going to be a very funny day. I put them on - stuffing as much of myself as could into this ridiculously small piece of fabric. When I thought I had done a sufficient job, I took a look in a mirror and was horrified. I felt indecent...they hardly covered my butt.
What could I do, though? The girls were already swimming and I had already paid. So, I walked out proudly in my little speedos and started swimming too. The girls didn't say anything when they saw me, and then I realized that they couldn't appreciate my embarrassment because, in their countries, what I was wearing was perfectly ok...they're all from the EU.
I was less embarrassed because of that, but if you could have only seen me in these speedos - it was priceless. Immediately afterwards, I went to the sporting goods store and bought a boxer-brief style speedo that will at least leave more of me to the imagination.
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4 comments:
haha. Thank you for sharing that. I will have to remind myself not to stare or laugh in embarassment if I find myself in that situation!
Ha, that's great. The same thing happened to me when I was in France for a high school trip and staying with a host family. And to make it worse, the family was so proud of the new water slide at the pool and kept forcing me to try it out. Très uncool in a speedo. I feel your pain.
kindly immediately
1. go back to pool
2. request original tiny pair of speedos
3. put them on
4. jump in pool.
5. come out of pool
6. take photo
7. post photo to this blog
Zach, you are taking me back to my years in France from 1964-1966 when I taught at Dreux AFB. Go see the chapel in Dreux sometime; its fascinating as are SO MANY places in France. Bayeaux has that famous tapestry; the invasion beaches of Normandy; Le Mont St. Michel - I love it all!
Terry Mason
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