There are a number of reasons why I’m not concerned about encountering Microsoft executives Steve Ballmer or Eric Rudder when I’m in the locker room. But I enoyed reading this post written by someone who lives with those possibilities [via Julie Lerman]. An interesting discussion of work etiquette while working out and “guy code” (I didn’t realize there was such a thing!).
One of the most memorable discussions I had in a locker room happened to me in high school. I somehow was alone in the place with one other athlete, a girl I envied for her beauty and talent. She was almost ethereal to me, walking on clouds, athletic gifting I could only imagine and looks that asked for second and third glances.
Yet there we were together. Somehow we started talking. Probably the first conversation we had had. And she told me that she had always wanted to be a runner. Perhaps she was only being polite. But I felt validated. I felt that she treated me like a real person, not the peon or peasant or younger stepsister I felt in comparison to her Cinderella. Despite my lack of beauty or talent she seemed to like me. Here I was wanting her life and, in a way, she said that she wanted my life.
What I’m learning as I go through life, is that the people who seem to be “famous” are ordinary in many ways. Their kids get runny noses, their cars break down, their houses spring sudden leaks. They have fears, dreams and bodily flaws. As the locker room reveals, celebrities are like anybody else.
1 response so far ↓
1 Katherine // Jun 10, 2004 at 10:29 pm
I think my most memorable moment in a locker room was when a “popular” girl asked me (decidedly *not* a popular girl) for a “cork” (terminology I had never heard of, and never again since). Good thing I figured out what she meant and had one to offer. Strange, strange, strange the things that stick in one’s mind for 15 years.