The YMCA = red neck country club

Don't be offended if you are a fellow Y patron, if you sing the YMCA louder than any of your friends, if you've worked there or lived there or been a member there for longer than you can remember.

Do not take offense.

I've worked at My Y for almost 8 years now (7 years and 11 months and 1 day to be exact, but hey, who's counting?). I can honestly say, come summer the Y turns into a red neck country club.

What I mean is we get a LOT of new members for the summer. The old members vanish to the outdoor pools and clubs or come at less conspicuous times of day. They spend the summer sipping lemonade and lounging by an outdoor pool in order to get some rays. In their place are new members with bleached blond hair from the box (it's actually kinda orange and stringy versus being done at a salon). Not only do these new patrons have bad hair, but they have at least 4 kids all under the age of 6. These kids are thrown in life jackets while they run across MY pool deck so that their mom's can hang out in the sauna in their yellow string bikinis.

Tattoos. Now. There are tasteful and even meaningful tattoos. Red neck tattoos take the cake. Now, perhaps they are meaningful to someone, but they are by no means tasteful. The tattoo I saw today on one of our new members backs was a teddy bear (that didn't look too cuddly, actually) holding 4 balloons. Each balloon had initials in it. I can only imagine that they stood for each of her four children.

Speaking of tattoos, working at pool I've seen some nasty, wrinkled, saggy, and washed out tattoos. I've included a picture of a ridiculously tacky tattoo on a pregnant woman. Unfortunately, I have not seen the likes of this in person. One can only hope.