     | september 10, 2010
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| september 10, 2010
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Leaving the Garden Nathanael Johnson -- 03/19/2006  I first discovered my family was different at a Lake Vera potluck. Up to that point in my five years of life, I had assumes we were perfectly normal. But then, I had no means of comparison. We had no TV and, though we read, families tend to dissolve into the background in children’s literature. Kids cannot become heroes if they have parents standing in their way, so authors kill off the adults or separate them from their children or simply dress them in dark floral prints and force them to sit in matching armchairs.My mother ran a day-care center and everyday adults delivered a throng of companions to my door. With this influx of friends I seldom went over to other houses. The point being, when I went to that potluck at Lake Vera, I was innocent to any possibility that others might see our way of life as strange. Children ran up and down the lake shore. I was taken aback at their lack of interest in me. At home, on my own turf, my whims led fashion by the nose. I was responsible for the sandbox craze of ’82 and for the re-vogueing of the swing set. At the potluck though, the children raced past in screaming waves, following some other, wholly unknown trendsetter, to dive into the water. Lake Vera is a miserable little algae farm, but at that moment it looked marvelous. A platform floated not far from shore, filled to capacity. It was too much for me. I had to join in. I pulled at my father’s pant leg and told him I wanted to go swimming. “Okay,” he said, “we didn’t bring a swimming suit, but you can skinny dip.” This sounded perfectly reasonable. Nakedness has always been a part of our household. My father believed it was better to sleep naked, for one thing. “Gives your balls a chance to breathe,” he’s say. When sleeping naked I certainly wasn’t going to bother with clothes each time I went to the bathroom, got a glass of water or even, for that matter, when I wandered into the dining room for breakfast. If I was hot I’d take off my clothes. It just made sense. If I was swimming, why get a pair of shorts wet in the process? I stripped down and made for the water, my pudgy little brother hard at my heels. As we swam toward the platform my excitement mounted. They were playing king of the hill, pushing at each other, forming alliances, betraying them and splashing into the water in glorious defeat. I reached the little raft and pulled my body up bracing myself to take all comers. Instead of rushing me, everyone stopped. My brother was struggling onboard when a treble voice shrieked, “They’re naked! They’re naked!” and all the boys and girls jumped off the other side. The platform was completely empty save my brother and me. I tried to savor having this little kingdom to myself. I half-heartedly pushed my brother off the platform a few times, but there was no satisfaction in it. Demoralized, we swam back to shore and put our clothes on. I felt an odd sort of shyness the rest off the evening and stayed close behind my mother’s legs. end of page 1 [ 1 ] read more ... [ 2 ][ 3 ] |
