I See Naked People

And speaking of things you don't need to see....

Tim has an uncanny ability to see naked people (and find great parking spaces, though fortunately for our car, not at the same time.)

This talent revealed itself early in our marriage when he was in the laundry room of our first apartment building. A young woman wearing a tube top (clearly, we have been married a long time) was standing opposite him shaking her laundry out of its bag and into the washer...a little too vigorously. On about the third shake, the final bit of laundry dropped down, and so did her top.

This sighting was followed a few months later by a rooftop visit to avoid the intense heat in our apartment due to brainless management and a prolonged summer. While trying to catch a breeze, Tim also caught a good look at a guy in his apartment trying to beat the heat another way (apparently, he didn't take into consideration the L-shape of the building or lack of shades when he came up with this little brainstorm).

Someone else who didn't consider building shape was the couple who decided to sleep out on the balcony, naked, because, since the guy had roommates, doing so in his room might have proved embarrassing. (We actually happened to know this guy, so Tim took great delight in calling down and waking them up, then watching the ensuing scramble.)

After we moved out of the apparent nudist colony we were living in, the sightings came less frequently, but they did not stop.

While out at dinner one night, Tim's chair faced a window, which faced an apartment building, which contained a naked couple who owned sheer curtains, but no shades. Needless to say, the woman playing the piano was no competition for Tim's attention compared to the floor show across the way.

And speaking of shows, we used to have neighbors across the street who, well, provided a nightly one. They were a free-spirited couple that, despite living there a few years, still didn't have shades (have none of these people ever heard of Next Day Blinds?!? How about an old sheet or even wax paper? This isn't rocket science!). So when Tim would be coming in late from work, there was a strong possibility that he would catch the second show. (Rated PG 13--according to the neighbors on either side, the late show had an R rating at least)

And then there are the foreign naked people....

Like the time we were on a cruise and mistakenly ended up on a clothing optional beach (I guess the huge billboard behind our chairs should have clued us in, but somehow we missed it and were surprised by all the flesh-colored bathing suits until we realized they were birthday suits.)

Or the time in Paris when we were sitting at a little cafe on the left bank and a guy staying at the small hotel on the opposite corner decided to treat everyone to a strip show from his balcony (He had obviously had too much to drink, and we had not had nearly enough.). There are definitely some things better left to the imagination, like the amount of body waxing someone has had done.)

But, at the beach in Cannes, the naked people got their ultimate revenge on Tim.

It wasn't the lady selling bathing suits on the beach who, in her eagerness to display her wares for Tim, displayed, well, her wares for Tim when she whipped off one suit to put on another.

And it certainly wasn't the eighteen year old Sports Illustrated model who used the beach shower (topless, of course) to wash off all that pesky, clinging sand about three feet from his chair.

No, it was the last day when we were out on the pier and an older woman (and by older, I mean somewhere between ninety and death) was given the chair directly in front of Tim. After setting down her bag, she nonchalantly removed her turquoise one-piece to reveal a bright yellow thong!

As it this was not enough, she then proceeded to arrange her chair, towel, etc. for a good fifteen minutes (or at least until Tim was uncontrollably weeping, "Make it stop!").

Meanwhile, his sisters and I , who had been forced to listen to him extol the virtues of the eighteen year old the previous night at dinner (FYI, forty-something women do not want to hear how, at eighteen, everything is "in place") couldn't have been more pleased with his punishment.

Finally, here was incontrovertible proof that God was on my side.