Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Jan 16/02) - Steam may do good things for your skin but it doesn't do much for your brain.

The city's winter oasis, the Ruth Inch Memorial Pool, includes a fine steam room that many use on a regular basis.

I use it occasionally. One of those occasions, last year, was more memorable than the rest.

After spending a little too long in the heat fog, I emerged to shower off before a soak in the hot tub.

It felt as though my brain was swishing around inside my head as I made the right turn to the short hall leading to the shower area. Turning the corner to the showers I was shocked to see a naked woman under one of the shower heads. She was as alarmed to see me.

What was she doing in the men's shower?

Alarm jolted me as the reality of the situation struck -- I had walked into the wrong shower. "Sorry, sorry, sorry," I blurted out as I fled.

I entered the pool area certain everyone had seen my mistake and expecting, at any moment, the woman to come running out screaming blue murder. They apparently had not and she did not.

Last week, sitting in the hot tub, a cab driver I know mentioned he had made the same mistake that very evening. Fortunately, the shower was empty.

"It happens all the time," said lifeguard Steve Woodham, who has worked on and off at the pool for the last five years. "He's done it," he added with a laugh, pointing to a young lifeguard standing nearby.

The young lifeguard smiled and said not a word when asked about the incident.

Woodham himself has had a similar change room surprise. One day he went to get ready for a shift in the chair, only to find a woman getting ready to take a swim.

"She was pretty well half undressed when I got in there," he said. "I just said, 'Whoa lady, you're in the wrong changeroom.'"

Lifeguard Rhonda Popson said cleaning the changerooms at the end of the day can also be an adventure. She said female lifeguards have been working in the men's changeroom when a male walks in, says 'Hi', and starts taking his clothes off.

"We have a bunch of guys who come into the steam room and sometimes they bring their friends," Popson said. "They sometimes walk into the wrong shower."