People tell amazing stories in internet chat rooms. It's very hard to know if they're true. But sometimes when I chat with someone I feel a real sincerity and genuine intensity that makes me believe them. These are the stories I capture and pass along to you. They're not exact transcripts, but are very true to the original. Let me know what you think.

Family Changing Room. I kept reading the sign on the door over and over. It had a stick-figure icon of a tall person holding the hands of two small people, one on each side.

We were taking a tour of our new local health club. It's a beautiful place, with two pools, indoor and out, and every modern exercise facility you can imagine. I was with my wife Carol, and our two daughters. Stephanie is 8, and Caroline is 6. They were very excited about the possibility of having a pool to go to regularly.

I asked the young woman who was guiding our tour what the room was for.

"We don't allow children of the opposite gender in the regular locker rooms once they're age 4. So, if you're a mom bringing your 5-year old son, you can't bring him into the ladies'," she explained. "And you may not want to send him unescorted into the men's."

"Or a father with a daughter, same idea," she added, recognizing that she hadn't used the most relevant example. "And sometimes, families just prefer the privacy."

I watched my wife. She nodded and smiled, and said "That's such a great idea. We'd definitely want to take advantage of that."

I have to confess, I had an unexpected reaction. I didn't invite this thought into my mind, but it came anyway. I'll be in that small room with my daughters. My wife won't be with us - she's always too busy. And my daughters and I will undress together. All the way.

My mind raced ahead. And after we swim, we'll do it again.

Until recently, my wife had pretty much handled things with the girls. I was working long hours, and she relished the chance to take a break from her career and be with them full time. I loved them, of course, but hadn't been involved with things like bath time in several years. I hadn't seen them naked since they were tiny. And I couldn't recall them ever seeing me naked.

Now my wife was returning to her law firm, and I was starting a high school teaching job that would leave me time to play daddy. The health club seemed like a great way to have things to do with the girls.

I was still processing my new-found feelings, so I let my wife make the decision on whether we should join or not. To my delight, and to the effervescent joy of the girls, she said we should sign up for a six-month trial membership.

The next morning, as we were getting dressed for work, my wife said "You should take the girls swimming today."

"I should be able to do that. I can pick them up from school." My heart was thumping.

"Do you think you'll use that Family Changing Room?" she asked. She's always had a sense of what I was thinking, which sometimes scares me. But she had her own motivation for the question, it turned out.

I tried to be nonchalant. "I don't know. What do you think? They'd probably be ok on their own in the ladies'."

"I'm not comfortable with that," she said. "I mean, they've never been in a public place alone like that before. God knows what could happen."

"OK," I said. "It's just..."

"What?" she prompted.

I stuttered a bit. "D-do you think they'll be shy around me? I mean, I haven't been very involved with them lately."

She laughed. "I think it's you who's shy. Don't be a baby," she laughed. "You're their father. They'll be fine and so will you. Just don't make a big deal of it." She kissed me and ran out the door.

I packed the girls' things in a little duffle bag. Matching one-piece swimsuits. Very conservative, chosen by their mother. But still so tiny. I was holding Steph's suit, and I thought it must be Caroline's since it was so small. Then I found Caroline's, and marveled again. Packed some towels - I had forgotten to ask if the club provided them. Flip flops. Nose plugs. Sun screen. Inflatable water wings. I almost forget my own suit in the heat of the moment.

The girls were very chatty and giggled constantly on the way to the club. I was quiet. I honestly didn't know if I was nervous or what. I just wasn't sure how it would all unfold, so to speak.

We arrived and went inside. Steph was the first to recognize the looming issue.

"Where do we change, Daddy?"

"In here, honey." Pointing at the sign. Family Changing Room. Tall stick figure. Two short stick figures.

"Together?" She almost shrieked. Face turning bright red. Oh boy. Here we go.

"That's what mommy wanted us to do. She wasn't comfortable with you going alone into the ladies' locker room." I used my most reasonable voice, looking around for other people. Fortunately, the hallway was empty.

"NO WAY." It was a final declaration. "I'm going in BY MYSELF," Steph asserted. And off she went. She closed the door loudly behind her, leaving Caroline and myself standing in the hall, looking awkward. I heard the door lock.

Ten seconds later the door opened slowly. Steph's head peered out. "I need my suit," she said sheepishly. This had sort of ruined her grand exit, and I couldn't help but laugh as I handed her the duffle bag.

She emerged about two minutes later in her suit, a look of defiant victory on her face.

Caroline was befuddled. She didn't see what the big deal was. She was holding my hand, and looked up at me questioningly. "Our turn now, Daddy?" This eliminated my momentary fear that she would imitate her sister, behavior that was all too common.

So in we went. I closed the door quietly and locked it.

It was a nice room, with padded benches and new, clean tile. There was a small open shower area with a curtain separating it from the room, but no dividers between the three shower heads. I turned around to get Caroline's swimsuit from the duffle bag. I'm sure this took no more than 3 seconds. Still, when turned again to hand it to her, she was completely naked. Her sundress and white cotton underpants were in a small heap on the floor next to her.

I'm sure I blushed, and I know I stared, but she didn't seem to notice. The word that kept running through my mind was "perfect". She's so perfectly proportioned, so perfectly smooth, so perfectly natural. She'd lost her baby fat that summer during her first season of soccer. Her hips were barely visible, but her tummy ran in a flat straight line from her navel to the cleft between her legs. Perfectly formed thighs met there, highlighting her pale bare lips. They must be so soft, I thought. It wasn't a sexual thing, not then at any rate. Just awe-inspiring.

I managed to hand her the bathing suit, and she began to put it on. I stood watching her silently until she looked up, obviously wondering why I wasn't changing. I had to make a choice. So I chickened out.

"You can go wait with Steph while I change, honey. Don't go anywhere else without me though."

"OK," she said. And she slipped out of the door. I changed by myself, with the image of her perfect naked body burned into my retinas.

We had a great time in the pool. The girls couldn't really swim yet, but they're both athletic and generally without fear. I needed two sets of eyes to accommodate all of the demands of "Watch me, Daddy!" as various feats of pool daring-do were accomplished. Breath-holding, side-jumping-off, and underwater-upside-downess were all spectacularly achieved. We were in the water for almost an hour and were thoroughly pruned.

As it came time to leave, I began to dread another scene with Stephanie. I decided to talk to her to head off a meltdown.

"When we go back to change, Caroline and I don't want to stand outside dripping. We need to go into the room together. You can wait until we're done to change if you want." I thought this was a reasonable compromise, and it seemed to mollify her somewhat. From this I guessed that she was mostly concerned with me seeing her - she'd certainly been naked with her sister a great deal, and they still took baths together sometimes. She rolled her eyes, but didn't argue.

When we got back to the Family Changing Room, I realized that I didn't have many options. Stephanie sat on the bench, towel around her shoulders, shivering and facing away from us. I told Caroline that we should rinse off in the shower, so we went in with our suits still on.

"It's nice and warm, Steph," I chided her. She poked her head around the curtain, and felt the water. Her chill won out, and she stepped in under the shower next to me. Just like the picture on the door, I thought. Tall person in the middle, little ones on either side.

Now or never, I thought. But I lingered under the warm water another minute or so.

Now or never.

"Caroline, we should rinse off our suits before we take them home. So take it off and run it under the water, honey." She peeled it off without hesitation and held it up to the running water.

And I did the same with mine.

I felt like I was on automatic pilot. I still remember the scene as though I were watching it from above. But there I was, naked in front of my daughters. I tried to act as casual as I could, and to not look to see if they were looking.

But I couldn't not look, of course. By the time I did, Stephanie had gone back to the bench and was toweling off with her suit still on. Caroline was staring unabashedly at my crotch.

"Is that your penis, Daddy?" Very matter-of-fact.

"Yes, honey." I saw myself say it, after a very brief pause.

"It's funny looking. Mommy told us about it." And she went back to rinsing out her suit.

Just like that, Caroline and I reached a level of comfort with each other that made me feel relaxed for the first time that day. We got out of the shower, and I toweled her off, both of us still naked. I dried myself as she got dressed, and we chatted the whole time. Steph sat resolutely facing the wall. We left her there while Caroline and I walked out, hand-in-hand. "Remember to rinse off your suit, Steph," I called back over my shoulder.

Stephanie came out about ten minutes later, hair pointing in all directions. She was very quiet on the ride back home.

When Carol returned that evening, the pool was of course the first topic of conversation. Caroline gave a full list of her accomplishments without punctuation.

"I held my breath and I jumped off the side and I swam but just like a dog so Daddy said it's not real swimming so I gotta learn to do it the other way and I did a flip underwater but Steph helped so I didn't really do it by myself and I saw Daddy's penis."

"Wow, sounds like you had fun," said Carol. She was looking at me and trying hard not to laugh. But neither of us could contain it. I think we both nearly choked. Steph rolled her eyes and said "God, you're SUCH a BABY!"

When we were alone, Carol asked, "So, it worked out ok, the changing room?"

"I guess so. Stephanie was very shy though. She wouldn't change while we were in the room together. I thought she was going to throw a tantrum, so I didn't push it. Caroline was fine - I guess you'd already given them Male Anatomy 101?"

"I told them the basics, yes."

I related the exchange with Caroline in the shower, and she laughed. "I had the same reaction to my brother's when I first saw it. 'What a ridiculous thing! What's all the fuss about?'"

"Do you think Steph is too old for this? Should we let her go to the locker room?" I asked. It was a sincere question.

"I'll talk to her, then we can decide," she said.

Carol came to bed after tucking the girls in. She said, "I had a talk with Steph. She's really just shy about anybody seeing her at this point. If she goes to the locker room, there will be a bunch of strangers seeing her. Once she understood that, I think she feels like she'd rather go to the Family Changing Room. But I told her that it's not fair to make you wait outside. I think she's ok with it now."

I gave a non-committal grunt, not being entirely convinced. After a minute, she asked, "Are you ok with it? Did it make you uncomfortable?"

I considered my answer carefully. "Once I saw that Caroline really didn't care, it was fine. Nice, even. I mean, it made me feel more like a real father in some way, if that makes any sense."

She was thoughtful. "It makes perfect sense. I still value those moments when I take a bath with one of the girls. It won't last much longer, I'm afraid."

The next trip to the pool came a few days later. Stephanie came with us into the Family Changing Room without protest. Caroline was naked and in her suit in one continuous motion. Unlike the first time, I didn't hesitate to undress. Stephanie was obviously stalling, waiting for us to leave.

This time, though, she looked at me.

She had taken off her shirt, but still had her shorts on. As I slid off my boxers, her eyes fixated on me. I know it's not real, but I felt her eyes on my penis, like a physical contact. I looked at her eyes, and I thought, I never realized how green they are - just like Carol's. Seeing her and feeling her looking so intensely, and seeing her immaculate shoulders and her boyish chest and flat tummy, I had the first hint of something different between us.

I pulled on my suit, blushing profusely. Taking Caroline by the hand, I led her out of the room. "Take your time, Steph, and come to the pool when you're ready," I said quietly as we left.

In retrospect, I understand the difference in how Caroline and Stephanie looked at me. For the six-year-old mind, the penis was just a funny thing that I had and she didn't, and it was involved in some vague way in making babies, as was her vagina. And they were both where you peed from, which made the whole thing pretty gross.

But at 8, through the wonder of television, and friends' whispers at school, and more understanding of what her mother had told her about the process, Stephanie knew that the penis was how people had sex. And as she looked at mine, she was thinking about how sex worked. She was imagining how it could go inside of a girl, and wondering what it would be like when it happened to her. I hadn't expected this from my 8-year-old daughter. Welcome to 2012, I guess.

At the time, I just knew that it felt different with Stephanie. I was sure of some things - for example, I was pretty sure Stephanie wasn't going to exclaim to her mother that she'd seen Daddy's penis. But she was thinking intent, private thoughts, and I didn't dare to imagine what they were.

End of Part I.

To be continued.