Hi izdfiinstf

Folks! Just another note from the frontiers of where our worst-first thinking is taking us. Now it’s being built into the infrastructure. – L.

Dear Free-Range Kids: This “child predator hysteria” in America today is getting waaaay out of hand. I recently toured the new YMCA we have here in town and I was surprised, or perhaps not surprised, to find out that this state-of-the-art Y had not two, not three, but FIVE dressing rooms. It was equipped with a men’s dressing room, a women’s dressing room, a boys’ dressing room, a girls’ dressing room and a family dressing room. What a waste of space! Then there was a large sign above the men’s dressing room that read, “No one under 18 allowed in this dressing room.” Perhaps the women’s dressing room had the same sign above it but I didn’t notice. Either way, is this ridiculous or what?!

Goodness gracious, back in the 1960s, the city swimming pool I just about lived at as a youngster had a large OPEN area in each dressing room where both children and adults got dressed. So boys could be naked and men could be naked in front of each other….eeegads! Same with the showers. It was the same setup in the women/girls’ locker room. Let me emphasize here folks that no kid was scarred for life from seeing a grown man’s genitals! That type of concern was unimaginable back then. No one cared or was shocked at who they saw with their clothes completely off because it was a DRESSING room, for crying out loud!

Now I can understand the family dressing room concept because a 5-year-old girl, for example, who is accompanied by only her father might be too young to be on her own in the girls’ dressing room BUT might be a bit too old for the boys’ dressing room so a family dressing room solves that dilemma. But separate dressing rooms for all children under 18, and adults, is taking paranoia to a new level in MY opinion.

One more thing, back in the summer of 1965, when I went to Cub Scout camp with my dad, the camp site we were at was reserved only for us Cub Scouts and dads. So no females were in sight for miles and that was the whole point of the camp (the Brownies went to a similar camp with their moms). With that being the case, many of the dads who were too tall to stand upright in the tents, got dressed and undressed in front of their tent, OUTSIDE! Sometimes us kids did too! Today, those same dads would be arrested for child sexual assault only because they were completely undressed in front of minors. So when did we Americans become so paranoid? — Just a Normal Guy