We belong to a casual, low-key country club. We don’t have the golf membership – we have the social membership so the kids can do swim team and so we can eat in the restaurant. I don’t think the pool has been updated since the 70′s. This adds to the relaxed, friendly, “flip-flops welcome” vibe that I love about the place. Also, the lifeguards play Fleetwood Mac, and everybody knows each other.
What irks me are the bathrooms – they’re grotty, the potties are different sizes, and the showers say gas chamber. I’m codependent, as you may know, so when members from other swankier clubs come to us for home meets and have to use our appalling bathrooms, I cringe. Last year, for example, at a home meet, I noticed that the person standing in front of me was Chief Justice John Roberts – watching his daughter swim, right there in his khakis!
I was so worried he would have to use the potty!
I had been enjoying myself until Chief showed up and then I spent the rest of the meet wondering if he was going to have to use our potty – Secret Service would have to go in first, check it out, see how grotty it is, then whisk him off and shut us down, citing a health hazard.
The other clubs in our division are country clubs. Swanky with a capital S. We went to a meet at Chevy Chase (which my kids mispronounce – “Chubby Chase” – I haven’t corrected them) – they have a private ice skating rink, palm trees, a hunting room w. stuffed dead things on the walls, amazing pools…they had heated towels.
This place looks like The White House. But who wants to have to dress up like Jackie O. just to go to the pool?
I worry about this sort of thing affecting my kids. It goes into my parenting category of Dumb Stuff I Worry About – like when I was on an airplane sitting beside a five-year-old who was annoyed that she wasn’t sitting up in First. I hope my kids don’t turn out like her, but they already have an inkling that the seats up in First are way better than the ones in Coach, where we sit. Now they’re starting to understand that our club doesn’t have an all-you-can-eat ice cream sundae bar, skilled chefs in two-foot-tall hats, and dead animal heads on wood-paneled walls.
I was hoping they wouldn’t notice that our pool is just basically a hole in the parking lot, while Chubby Chase’s is…is…Hotel Disney. Nirvana. But after we had a swim meet there, Fi said: “Why do you think they don’t have heated swim towels at our club?”
I said, “Heated towels are environmentally unfriendly. That’s why at our club we put our towels on the ground and let the sunshine warm them, naturally. It’s better for the environment.”
I have these friends who are members of Chubby Chase. They don’t have kids so when they’re in town they occasionally invite us to the club and whenever they do I feel a little anxious, because of what happened last winter when they insisted on taking us on a tour of the “nice” part of the club. First they took us ice skating at the idyllic, uncrowded ice rink where parents could sit unmolested in the hunt room overlooking the rink, ordering roast beast served by men in the two-foot-tall chef hats, then have a cappuccino and chocolate mousse. They could order a Roy Rogers or some other obscure, vintage cocktail no one drinks anymore except the WASPY people who are actually members of clubs like these, because holy shit where do they get the $100,000 entrance fee to join? Or maybe i’ts $500,000 to join – I’m not really sure.
They took the girls skating in the private ice rink (where they were playing Fleetwood Mac, BTW…I was crushed! I’d pictured muzak, or Barry Manilow, not Fleetwood Mac!).
After skating and “lunching” we went bowling with the well-heeled families – well, minus the parents, because most of the kids were there with nannies.
See how little the bowling ball is? It turns out that the more you pay to bowl, the smaller the ball is. What a jip!
We saw the “babysitting room” where more smiling nannies watched kids while the parents went to play a round of golf, or have a swim, or talk to the president, or get sloshed on Pim’s Cups or do whatever the very rich do.
Then my friends, who are not codependent, insisted on taking us on a tour of the “nicer” section of the club to see the astonishing bathroom. I do not like to go into swank places when I’m dressed like a stay-at-home-mom who has lost interest in fashion (which is all the time). I was wearing jeans, snow boots, my big stupid Christmas sweater, and Fiona’s Tweety Bird snow hat.
I stopped at the front door and refused to go in because I was having a panic attack and flashbacks. My dad used to drag me into posh places like this against my will – he would be always dressed inappropriately (in his kilt say, or wearing a pith helmet and Bermudas, or worse, his mail-order sky blue pants), and driving one of his rust-bucket jalopies, so understandably, I have a permanent aversion to swank.
“You have got to see the bathroom,” said Michael.
“I don’t have to use the bathroom,” I said, vaguely aware that I sounded like a five-year-old.
“Mommy pleeeease?” begged Ella. “I want to see the marble potties.”
“The toilets are porcelain,” I hissed. “And I’m not dressed properly. Mommy is having a panic attack.”
Fiona: “Couldn’t you have a panic attack after we see the bathroom?”
Me: “We’ll be thrown out. We’re dressed like homeless people.”
“They can’t throw us out. We’re members,” said my friend, pointing out the hedge that she and her friends used to smoke pot behind back in high school before coming inside to use the astonishing bathroom.
A limousine pulled up to the curb, depositing a woman in a ball gown and her tuxedo’d husband at the door – the very same door that my pushy friends wanted me and my Tweety Bird hat to go through. My anxiety level tripled. My kids were starting to hang on my arms and pull at me – their faces smeared with chocolate mousse they’d OD’d on in the hunt room. They were all hopped up on mousse.
Ella: “Please, Mommy? We want to see the swanky potty! I’ll go poo!”
“Could you keep it down?” I said, having more flashbacks of my dad. His funky, rusted dump truck that he drove to a formal occasions “just to make a point that it doesn’t matter what kind of car you drive, it’s your character that matters.”
I let them push me into the lobby, and oh! What a lobby! Astonishing! Beautiful! Mesmerizing!
Instantly, a discreet team of Armani-clad security people descended upon us. I’m assuming it was my awful Christmas sweater that gave me away as not being a member. They were all dressed in black like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible. I was starting to sweat – this was my kind of nightmare.
“May we help you?” said one of them. What I heard was: You and the Tweety Bird hat aren’t welcome here.
“We were just leaving!” I said apologetically, turning to leave. My friend stopped me.
“We’re members,” she said, brushing past them. “We’re going to use the powder room.”
The security team kept Michael – who was also dressed inappropriately, like a regular person on a snowy winter night – as collateral, in case we should rush the ball room or something, and melt there.
So hey! We made it into the astonishing bathroom at Chubby Chase. And it was some bathroom. My kids and I ooh’d and aah’d. Ella zig-zagged in and out of every stall, saying: “The potties are all the same size!”
So – I’m uncomfortable in Swanky country clubs. They make me want Xanax. I do best in a casual habitat, a friendly atmosphere like the one at our little club. I don’t care if our toilets smell like port-a-potties, or if our snack bar is a breeding ground for salmonella. We have team spirit, people are friendly, and you can wear flip flops to the dining room without fear of being escorted out by the fashion police.
This is my friend Michael, minutes before we were discreetly escorted out for wearing inappropriate attire.
Linking up with Yeah Write.
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Oh dear, my PJs would definitely stand out there.
My favorite part of this was when you saw Chief Justice John Roberts and then all you could think was that the “Secret Service would have to go in first, check it out, see how disgusting it is, then whisk him off and shut us down, citing a health hazard.” Haha!
I don’t know what kept me reading this post
I read to the bottom, still don’t really know what it’s about besides an extremely interesting potty paranoia/fixation disorder. Normally I don’t read about that, but this was riveting from beginning to end! I wish I could write like that. You have a great writing style. I hope you’re writing a book.
I’m not quite sure what it was about either. Amazed someone actually read it to the bottom. PS: I did write a novel already – working on my 2nd one. Thank you for the compliment. (-;
Oh my, that does look and sound swanky!!
Way too posh for me that’s for sure. My family belongs to a club in my home town – I wouldn’t go as far to say that it’s a country club. It’s small, it’s friendly and everybody knows your name. Wouldn’t trade it for the world.
Wow! You captured so well the type of neuroses I experience 90% of the time as a mom. My new morning therapy routine: Prozac, coffee, and daily dose of Momalog! Love it.
Bethany: My target audience! (-:
Well, it sounds swanky….but….I’m a flip-flop and shorts kinda gal! I’d rather hang out where people see ME – not my clothes or my car!
I’m with you Ann – give me shorts & flip flops any day.
Man, there’s a lot I miss about living in the DC area, but you just reminded me about one thing I don’t miss – the Keeping up with the Joneses phenomenon. I could never figure out why I always felt like I had to keep up – it was in the air or something. You described it to a T! And I love that your kids just walked around that bathroom mesmerized and stated that the toilets were all the same size – hah!
I moved here from the W Coast 6 years ago and I must say – two things hit me: 1. VERY over-scheduled and competitive, holy cow! Esp. compared to Californians in general. And 2. Everybody belongs to a country-club but it’s more than just a pool or tennis in the sense it would be back in CA – it’s an identity. Here they take them so seriously, it’s high school exclusivity only all grown up and frankly I hate that kind of shite. Not for me. (But it *is* quite nice to tag along w. friends for the occasional ritzy lunch!)
Dear me. Think CC are a little beyond me. We used to belong to the Ritz back in the day. Mostly because they had a chocolate fountain at brunch and one of the few rare patches of grass in that entire country. But as the longer I am a parent the more I stay out of public places. Bonus is my son can pee anywhere he wants at our local beach.
I enjoy reading your blog, great story telling.
Thanks Stasha. (-: Your local beach sounds great for tots btw!
Hey Ms. California,
We East Coasters are “VERY over-scheduled and competitive”?!? Well…I’ll take your Chief ‘Justice-at-the-Swim-Meet’ and raise you a ‘First-Lady-at-the-Lacrosse-Game-While-My-Daughter-Guards-Sasha-Obama’. Take that.
From,
Your East Coast BF
You win, ECBFF.
WOW! Holy Lacrosse! PS: Who won the game?
What an experience. So the grass isn’t always greener… well maybe it is but you may need xanax
What a wonderful chance your family had even if it brought a flood of memories. It is always tough when you feel out of place and it brings back old family memories. Needless to say, in your case it makes for hysterical reading! -Laverne
I suppose a note is in order. ME is myalgic encephalomyelitis, otherwise known as chronic fatigue syndrome.
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Swanky Country Clubs Make Me Want Xanax http://t.co/X2uekva1
This is so funny! I have a feeling we were cut from the same cloth. Massive discomfort in uppity places and SAHM lack of fashion! I’m still in shock about the private ice rink.
If you have my sense of fashion you also have my pity. (-;
Uh oh! So there’s a place that don’t accept people who do not wear the proper attire? Can’t get it. Or maybe we just need to follow the rules. Lol!
Just reading that made me want to have a panic attack. I would be so not happy there…give me unmatched potties and sun-warmed towels.
Great then, you’re welcome at our pool anytime! (-:
Haha! I would definitely not fit in at the high society country club. I’ll stick to the neighborhood pool and clubhouse. At least I know I won’t be the most inappropriate person there. Ha!
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you again. I don’t mind the swank; I sometimes enjoy the swank. (Upgrade to Business? Yes, please!) But with the choice, I don’t want my kids to feel like that’s “normal.” For the vast, vast majority it is not. And while I don’t think there is anything wrong with fancy, I do feel like it’s important for people to feel Lucky and not Entitled. And it goes both ways: I don’t want my kids (or anyone’s kids) to feel embarrassed about not being ‘fancy enough’ or (to use a phrase I detest for its grad school flavor ‘less than.’
Did I say Thank you?
Well you’re welcome. (-: I agree wholeheartedly w. what you said about raising kids who are not entitled, too.
I can’t use a bathroom that’s cleaner than my kitchen.
Heh! (-:
I’ve never even been in a swanky place like that. I think I would be freaking out too if I didn’t look the part lol.
Well I sure was!
Ha, ha, ha! My dad belongs to one of those kinds of clubs, and we crash it all the time to swim in the fancy pool, and I swear my children are so spoiled from it! Love this post!
Thanks (-:
Hey, if your country club is good enough for the Chief Justice, then it’s good enough for me. I hate being the one who is underdressed. I feel your pain.
He isn’t a member of *our* club – his club was the visiting swim team at our crumbling-down club. (-:
Ooof! I’m uncomfortable with anything that fancy. Seeing Chief Justice Roberts is VERY cool, though..
It was pretty cool because now I can name-drop about rubbing shoulders with the Chief Justice of the Supreme court at our “club” and people will think I’m a big muckity muck.
Hey, as long as you and your family have fun, who cares about the swanky clubs, right? Right?? Yeah… I’d rather be at a swanky club, too. But whatever. You’re having fun!
I didn’t even know clubs like this existed. Does that say something about me? I thought only in the movies or 90210 or something.
That line about your dad and ‘growing character’…that made me laugh!
I love your posts.
I didn’t really know these places existed til we moved to the East Coast DC area – and lo and behold, they do.
I didn’t know clubs like this existed either, and seeing as we spend our weekends hanging in the man cave (aka the boyfriends garage) I’m pretty sure I would feel out of place.
I wish I could take a page out of my dad’s book and just walk in like I owned the place, like he would even if he was wearing a pith helmet.
I don’t belong to a country club
… so , but there is this bar down the street that has a window from the toilet stall out into the sink area. It is so if you go potty with your girlfriend you guys can still talk face to face while you take a crap. … classy.
HAHAHAHAHA! HA! and HA! Very classy. (-:
swanky and I don’t get along. The list of dumb things I/we/you worry about… I think we’ve got a novel between us!!
I’ve been MIA and have missed your voice here!
I’ve been MIA in Calif. too and have lots of catching up on blogs to do!
I would love to know what the Secret Service would have actually said!
70′s laid back is definitely more my style as well, goes better with my sweatpants, uhm I mean yoga pants.
Yes these days the politically-correct term is “yoga” pants as opposed to “sweat” pants. (-:
I work at a private club, but it’s not super swanky or stuffy. It’s mostly older folks who like to swim and get their drink on! Your dad, btw, sounds like my dad.
If your dad is anything like mine you must have great restraint! (-:
I have BEEN to that country club. I about shat myself. My friend’s parents belonged and when I was visiting her, she brought me and my unshaved legs to the pool, where a black man in white gloves (oh yes, white gloves), brought us mint juleps. Which are disgusting. And I got in trouble for not having the proper whites for the tennis court, so I came back the next day in my friend’s brothers too-big white shorts & a dirty white t-shirt. I’m a crappy tennis player but I just wanted to show them they didn’t scare me (but they did). It was as if the world had permanently frozen in 1952. I’m sure your friends who belong are lovely but the entire experience – and the club – sort of freaked me out. I share your pain & would’ve offered you a xanax had we been in the “powder room” together. Maybe they still call it that b/c it’s where the ladies go to do their Bolivian Marching Powder?
Hahahaha! Oh that is so funny. Frozen in 1952! I love that you went back to show your ferocity on the tennis court! (-:
Oh, the thought of you in your Tweety hat cracked me up! I share your aversion to swanky places.
I probably should’ve been happy to see that bathroom but I wasn’t!
I live in a small town heavily divided by the people of Chubby Chase and the people of Walmart, and never the two shall meet. I worked as a bartender at Chubby Chase and wasn’t it interesting how differently I was treated. When I meet someone as a professor, they treat me one way. When I bartend, even though I am still me, I am treated totally differently. If you wore flip flops in the dining room of our Chubby Chase you would be admonished and set on fire. I’m pretty sure. I think Chubby Chase’s are bad for one’s health
If I was a member, rather than an employee I would be drunk ALL the time, skip the Xanax. It’s not that people aren’t “nice,” it’s just… a feeling of not belonging and not wanting to. The things they talk about… snooze.
Well thanks for enlightening me on how boring the very rich are. I’m happy to be a flip flops girl any day! (-:
Honestly, I’ve never been to any country clubs, but they don’t seem to be very cool. They could be boring and old-school. There could have been a special atmosphere of this places 30 years ago, but not now. That’s my opinion.
That is seriously funny. I could relate in the sense that, when my mom was alive, and she had a stroke in the bathroom of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and was sent to the hospital, I had to take a bus down from San Francisco to get her. (I could not drive because of my driving-on-the-highway panic attacks.) And to make matters worse, we had to spend the night in a hotel because the next bus back to SF did not leave until the next afternoon, but we had to check out at 11 a.m. We ended up walking around downtown Monterey in front of swanky expensive hotels and restaurants carrying paper bags with clothes and other personal belongings. I felt so embarrassed! I told myself when I am rich (hey, it could happen!) I’m buying the most expensive fucking lugguage I can find! And I’m going to the swankiest hotel in Monterey! Sadly, without my mom. OK, I feel better now! LOVE, LOVE, LOVE YOUR WRITING!
Lisa, OMG, there’s a whole book in that! Seriously! I can picture you walking around Monterey w. the paper bags and clothes in them. Wow. PS: Sorry about your mom. I hope that you can drive now?
HA! I live near “Chubby Chase” and can so relate to this post. Oh, it is definitely keeping up with the Jones’s around these parts
Sure is!
Funny. But I did think the whole “heated towel” thing sounded wonderful. If my towels have cooled off in the dryer I always set it again so I can fold warm towels. (and so clever re your clubs are green-heated, underground. funny.
“Green-heated towels” – we could start a new green trend! (-:
we are just like you….we belong to the cruddy club. as a matter of fact, just got home from a swim meet and was mortified about what the other team must be thinking of our bathrooms. can totally relate!
p.s. heated towels ARE bad for the environment! quick thinking, woman!
Well then, it’s official about the heated towels being bad for the environment and my quick white lie was actually a fact! (-:
I would be having a panic attack right alongside you. Way too schmancy for me.
Maybe *everybody* who goes to that club is having their own secret panic attack?
Love that the chief was in your pool. Amazing.
Great post!
I know! I know! It *was* amazing!
Surprise, surprise, I can totally relate. There must be something about abject, repeated mortification in your early formative years that scars you for life. Actually, that feeling of panic is rising up from my gullet as I’m typing this comment. In my childhood it was as if every social norm was being violated, every social cue was ignored and I was powerless to do anything about it. I always had the feeling like I was watching a very bad movie play out on a huge screen, while simultaneously feeling like I was pinned under a magnifying glass with the added bonus of a very strong ray of sunshine focused on my chest.
Therefore I seem like a perfectly fine adjusted human being when I’m in a casual setting, but kick it up to the level of Chubby Chase and I’m pulled back to the insecurities of my childhood of always feeling adrift and out of step. And, oh, I know Chubby Chase.
So I made it out of my childhood, but only so far. I’m happy in my hick town where things aren’t a competition and I can run around without make-up on and show up to my kids’ schools in my yoga pants because I’m not being judged by my exterior, but on who they know me to be. I thank goodness I did not end up in a pressure cooker, competitive environment because when I broke out of childhood that is exactly what I was gunning for.
BTW, have you ever considered that the Fleetwood Mac is just playing in your head?
Ellen
Ellen: Wow, what a comment. I think you should write this as a whole blog post, it captivated me. You described exactly how I felt as a child – and how those strange feelings creep up on me in places like Chubby Chase as a “grown up.” Write about this! (-: PS: No, I never considered FM is just playing in my head but thank you for the suggestion, now I’m paranoid. But there could be worse bands playing in my head. (-:
I think I’m warming myself up in the comment section of your blog.
One day I’ll be ready to write about these things. One day. Ellen
Write em now! Write, write! Take a page out of Anne Lamott’s book: Write about your life like the people you love are dead. I dare you…! (I’d read it!)
Oh my gosh you are too funny! I love the offer: “I’ll go poo!” As if that’s what helps in a swanky bathroom – poo! Loved it.
I know! (-:
I’m afraid xanax wouldn’t have been enough for me~~ they’d have to up it to Versed, which would eliminate all inhibition, and I wouldn’t care because it’s also an amnesiac that prevents memories from forming! I mean amnesiac in the sense that the second you’ve said/done something, you can’t remember it~~ that would make me comfortable even at Chubby Chase!!
P.S. You’ve blown my image of our Supreme Court Justices eating, sleeping and doing everything else dressed in those important and wise-looking robes, spending their every waking moment thinking deep thoughts about constitutionality. Well, so much for that. Can you think constitutional thoughts while dressed in bermuda shorts and surrounded by dead animal heads perched high on a wall?
Your kids really have a great time in country club. They really enjoy in the country club through swimming, skating and bowling. It is really nice to be a member in a country club.