A 1951 Schwinn Spitfire like mine in 1963 when the world was golden.
My bicycle was red. It was red and looked just like the ones that Captain Kangaroo had in his commercials that we watched on a black-and-white TV every day before we walked or rode our bicycle to school, across town a whole long seven blocks away. After school I could ride it out a whole mile and a half to Jack’s farm with Bobby and Richard and Mark the preacher’s kid to go skinny dipping in the cold creek in Jack’s South pasture. Jack was younger than any of us except Bobby. And it was a golden age.
Spiderman comic books and Avengers comic books cost twelve cents to own, but they were forbidden. And as much as we sneaked them and passed them around until they fell apart, usually in Bobby’s hands, we never knew that Dr. Wertham had gone to Congress to make our parents believe that comic books would make us gay and violent. He was a psychiatrist who wrote a book, so even if you didn’t believe him, you had to worry about such things.
I believed in Santa Claus until 1967. And after I found out, I only despaired a tiny little bit, because I began to understand you have to grow up. And adults can lie to you, even if they don’t do it to be mean. And the world is a hard place. And the golden age ended in November of 1963 when JFK was assassinated.
In June of 1968 I rode my bicycle out to the Bingham Park woods, Once there, I took off all my clothes and put them in the bicycle basket, and then I rode up and down the walking paths through the trees with nothing between me and God but my skin. I had a serious think about how life should be. All the while I was terrified that someone might see me. I was naked and vulnerable. A mere two years before that I had been sexually assaulted and was terrified of older boys, especially when I was naked and vulnerable. But I was a fan of the St. Louis Cardinals and Bob Gibson. They were repeated World Series winners. And they beat the Yankees in the series in 1964. And more important than that, cardinals were the little red songbirds who never flew away when the winter came. You don’t give up in the face of hardship. You face the trouble. No matter how deep the snow may pile up.
And in 1969, the first man to walk on the moon showed that a Star Trek world was in reach of mankind. Star Trek was on every afternoon after school. I watched a lot of those episodes at Verner’s house on his family’s black-and-white TV. The Klingons were always bested or beaten because the crew of the Enterprise outsmarted them. You can solve the problems of the universe with science. I know this because of all the times Mr. Spock proved it to me not just by telling me so, but by showing me how you do it. And what you can achieve is greatly enhanced if you work together like Spock and Kirk and Bones… and sometimes Scotty always did.
So, what is the way it should be? What did Mickey decide while naked in the forest like a Dakota Sioux shaman on a spirit-quest?
JFK’s 104th birthday was on May 29th. Dr. Wertham has been dead for 40 years. Bob Gibson was 85 when he passed away in October of last year. Captain Kirk turned 90 in March of this year.
The Golden age is long gone. There is no single set of rules that can clearly establish how it should be now. But I like those ideas of how it should be that I established for myself while naked on a Schwinn Spitfire in a forest long ago.
Xanthophobia (from Greek xanthos, “yellow”) is fear of the color yellow. In China the color yellow was feared, specifically receiving the yellow scarf, which was an imperial order to commit suicide.
Yes, “xanthophobia” is a word I have never used in my life before now. I have no doubt that I will never need that word again in my life. You, dear reader, will probably never need that word either. But the derfy space-ranger part of my brain thinks it is neat that I was able to correctly answer a trivia question about the meaning of “xanthophobia”simply because my background as an artist who has shopped for exotic oil colors in artist supply stores helped me to recognize that the “xantho” part of the word meant yellow.
Are there other totally useless words that my space-ranger brain thinks are cool to know? Of course there are! How can you ask such a silly question?
Ouzel may refer to:
Common blackbird or ouzel, a species of thrush, all-black in the male
Lord Howe thrush or ouzel, an extinct subspecies of the island thrush
River Ouzel, a river in England, a tributary of the Great Ousel
So, what is the actual use of knowing so many words that you can never functionally use? Besides as a topic of a goofy post like this?
They become like the pebbles and rocks at the bottom of the briskly rushing stream of my mind. They are not moving with the water, but they are affecting the ripples and splashes on the surface above them. They cause eddies and backwashes and undercurrents in the complex flow of my space-ranger brain. They make life more interesting on the surface.
And besides, knowing useless words can make me sound smarter than the fool with a derfy space-ranger brain that I truly am.
***Warning*** There are no real nude public schools that openly do any of what is being suggested here, tongue-in-cheek. This is a humor blog, so of course I’m totally serious!!!
The answer to the question, “Could you ever run a public middle school as an all-nude school?” is definitely NO! The reasons are extensive, but not complex. The culture we have created is so sexually repressed and prudish that the Gordian Knot it is tied up in will never be loosened, cut, or untied. That doesn’t mean, however, that it is an evil idea that would only create chaos and bad outcomes. I know you may think of me as a pervert for even thinking about this topic. But my experience as both a victim of sexual assault and a veteran teacher of both middle schoolers and high schoolers gives me some insight about how a nudist/naturist lifestyle could be beneficial to adolescent learners.
We start by acknowledging that public schools throughout the civilized world rely on dress codes in public schools. Going against that standard can violate the law and will certainly cause backlash from religious groups and the moral outrage of the average Fox News consumer. That is far more dangerous than the benefits would be worth. So, if a school was to be started with a clothing-optional dress code, or a mandatory nudity dress code, it could only be done in an experimental framework with participation from families dedicated to nudism and naturist ideals. I may be lurching into strange idea territory here, but some things are not only true but funny.
The problems that an experimental nudist school would address include the need for open and honest sex education, a better understanding of societal needs for consent and approval, improving individuals’ basic body self-image, and a social acceptance of individual differences and perceptions of beauty and attractiveness.
Of course, you realize this is a humor blog and a topic that is not entirely serious. However, it is humor based on the idea that surprisingly revealed truths can be funny.
Adolescents, especially the middle-school variety, are obsessed with beauty and attractiveness. And if in any modern American middle school the principal suddenly held an assembly and declared that the whole school was going with an all-nude dress code the next morning, many of the students, especially boys, would die on the spot of embarrassment. Comparisons to each other would not be nearly as embarrassing as the inevitable comparisons with what they are used to seeing on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and the porn that the adults all lie to themselves about porn not being available to students in grade school through high school graduation.
Middle school boys all see each other naked in public schools because of physical education classes with their mandatory after-class showers. And girls are pretty much the same. The only barrier is that boys and girls do not see each other naked because of unisex shower facilities. Any sneaking into the other side’s shower rooms is treated as a monstrous criminal act. Of course, parents don’t want mixing in that area because they believe it would all turn into a massive heterosexual orgy. They don’t worry about same-sex orgies because those shower rooms are supervised by a same-sex coach who is rarely showering with students. So, boys all imagine how beautiful the girls’ shower room must look while noting all the bulgy-body doughboys and toothpick-thin skinny guys mixed into their shower room. The girls all picture Greek godlings in the boys’ shower room while sneering at all the dumpy dames and skinny Minnies mixed in their own shower room.
So here’s the idea that may get me arrested in Texas. All students naked in the classroom would be a good thing. Kids would see the truth about both sexes. They would not only be able to find the beauty in all sorts of nude bodies, but they would also feel like they could normalize their own self image against the whole rainbow of nude body types. They would be able to accept all the differences and become desensitized to the constant sexualization of nude bodies that our repressive society is prone to.
And get this, teachers of both sexes might be better off dressed in teacher costumes to separate themselves from the hormone Olympics so they might better be able to negotiate the perception problems that kids have about each other even when they are not nude.
Middle school kids are already always metaphorically naked when they are in school. They are not mature enough to know how to conceal private things. This is a real problem for gay boys and girls who are just beginning to realize who they are. So, rather than learning to conceal and hide things, naked kids have to really learn who they and all their friends are underneath it all. The unvarnished naked truth.
My imaginary grandson attends his imaginary nude science class. Yeah… will never happen.
So, there will probably never be an all-nude public middle school. But here’s the first reason it is worth exploring experimentally, maybe in a private school. A nude school would help students fighting to make their way through adolescence to gain a deeper self-awareness than they could get while wearing clothes.
Something to think about while you are lighting the torches and sharpening the tines of your pitchforks to visit my house after midnight. And if I survive this night, there will be other essays on this blog like this that deal with the other possible benefits I listed above.
I have told you repeatedly (if you are foolish enough to read more of my blog than is probably healthy for normal people) that I am a pessimist. Like Benjamin Franklin, I believe it is best to always prepare for the worst that can happen and actually expect it. With current gun laws in this nation, and the way corrupt politicians and businessmen continue to profit off the suffering of the rest of us, and people’s basic selfishness and cruelty to others in word, thought, and deed, we rarely get a glimpse of anything but the worst of human nature. We are never disappointed when we expect the worst to happen. And yet, since I am never taken by surprise by bad things, only by unexpected good things, all that is surprising is wonderful and made up of very good things. Human beings are capable of amazing goodness and works of wonder, not in spite of their many failings, but because of them. The miracle of life is how the lowly worm turns into a beautiful butterfly. How the tiny brown seed becomes the brightly colored blossom in a vast field of other flowers.
When I tell others that I believe that people are basically good and that I believe all students can learn, I often get an argument. Mass shooters like we had last week and wars and terrorists crop up by the multitudes in order to refute my belief. People who think I am an atheist tell me i’m being a hypocrite to think we should operate our lives around facts and proof and then hold a difficult-to-prove belief like this. Maybe it is an act of faith… but an act of faith that my theocratic friends call a belief in humanism, which they prefer to see as something from Satan. Well, I do believe in God. I just don’t believe in a god who waves a magic wand and intervenes. I believe that God Jehovah (or possibly Allah or the godhead or whatever you want to name Him) made us like the flower seed, meant to grow and transform, and to be winnowed like grain by the winds and rains of life experience. Not all flowers blossom. But more of them do when you water and weed and nurture them. And what is true for flowers is true for men and women. What can I say more about human beings to convince you that I am not wrong to be in awe of them… even the weedy ones? Probably nothing. If you are not open to such ideas, you haven’t read this far. But whether you read this far or not, I am fascinated by you, and will always want to know more. And I am not going to start a new church or something. I am merely going to continue to watch and to wonder.
The question before me now is, “What do you know, and how do you know it for certain?”
Well, I really don’t know anything. How do I know that I don’t know anything? Well, Socrates always told everyone who would listen that he didn’t know anything for certain, and he is obviously much smarter than I am. So, being super-stupid by comparison, I don’t even know as much as Socrates.
So, like Socrates, I need to ask questions. But who will I ask? I can look at the picture above for answers, and I can ask you, the reader, the questions.
The picture is one of the most favorite ones I have ever drawn. By that I mean it is one of the pictures I drew with colored pencils that I like the best. It is, therefore, basically a self portrait of things inside my silly head.
Do the soldiers look familiar to you? If they do, it is probably because, like me, you have seen the soldiers from Disney’s Babes in Toyland. Hopefully they are just generic enough that Disney wont sue me for modeling this fantasy on something I saw in their copyrighted movie. I didn’t intentionally copy anything, and I have never knowingly made a single dime off of this picture. So, they don’t need to sue me, right?
Okay, those weren’t Socratic questions. They were leading and focused questions. So, let’s start the Socratic stuff.
Do you see anything in the picture that is innocent and childlike? Could this be illustrating a childish fear of the darkness? Did you notice the darkness they are marching towards on the left of the picture? Could this also be showing a progression towards maturity? Are the children and the soldiers not approaching that darkness… whatever it might be? Are they not getting more prepared to face the darkness as they get closer to it? The weapon pointed straight at the darkness is the bugle. Does the bugle, being an instrument for announcing something in combat, not have some symbolic meaning here? Does the darkness they are approaching not represent something like death? Does the boy with the drum suggest how we might deal with the darkneness in our own too-near future?
It is a difficult thing to be an atheist who believes in God. Sometimes it takes an oxymoron to find the Truth. And you often have to go heavily on the “moron” portion of the word.
The thing I find most distressing about faith is the fact that those who have it are absolutely convinced that if you don’t agree with them and whatever book of fairy tales they believe in and interpret for you, then you are not a True Believer and you do not have real Faith.
I remember being told by a Mormon girl in one of my classes that I was her all-time favorite teacher, but she was deeply distressed that, because of my religion (I professed to be a Jehovah’s Witness at the time) I was doomed to burn in Hell forever.
Hey, I was raised in Iowa. I have experienced minus 100 degree Fahrenheit windchill. I am among those who think a nice warm afterlife wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.
But I am no longer actually a Jehovah’s Witness. So I guess that helps with the whole Hell-burning thing. The Witnesses are a religion that claims to understand the Bible is full of metaphorical truth, and yet insist that it is literally true. They don’t believe in Hell, which, honestly, is not actually mentioned or explained in the Bible as we have it now. But they do believe your prospects for eternal life on a paradise Earth are totally contingent on knocking on doors and telling other people that they must believe what you believe or experience eternal destruction. I have stopped being an active Witness and knocking on doors because I got old and sick, and all the caring brothers and sisters in the congregation stopped coming around to visit because number one son joined the Marines, and the military is somehow evil hoodoo that cancels out any good you have done in the past. Being a Jehovah’s Witness was really hard work with all the meetings (5 per week), Bible reading (I have read the entire Bible two and a half times), door-knocking, and praying, and you apparently can lose it all for saying, thinking, or doing one wrong thing.
According to the Baptist preachers, Jehovah’s Witness elders, religious zealots, and other opinionated religious people I have known and dealt with in my life, if I do not believe what they believe and agree with them in every detail, then I do not know God and am therefore an atheist. So, okay, I guess I am. If I have to be an atheist to believe whole-heartedly that everyone is entitled to sincerely believe whatever the hell they want to believe, then I’ll wear that label.
On a personal note, my favorite verse of the Bible has always been 1 John 4:8, “He that does not love has not come to know God, because God is love.” That is why I claim to be an atheist who believes in God. I know love. I love all men, women, children, animals, sunrises, artwork, paintings of angels by Bouguereau… everything that is. And I even love you if you exercise your freedom to tell me, “Your ideas are totally wrong, and you are going to burn in Hell, Mickey, you bad guy, you!” Mark Twain always said, “I would choose Heaven for climate, but I would prefer Hell for company.” I am not going to worry about it. I will be in good company. Some things are just bigger than me. And trying to control things like that is nonsense. Sorta like this post.
It took a very long time to come to terms with my natural urge to be naked.
For years I couldn’t join nudist organizations or go to nude beaches because I was a public school teacher in Texas where Southern Baptists get to decide if you are going to Hell when you die. Teacher contracts have a moral conduct clause that can magically make you disappear. On top of that was my life-long battle with the trauma caused by being sexually assaulted by a Sadist at the age of ten. The desire to go nude all the time was always there. But it took me almost sixty years to become a nudist.
I have always felt that being naked was good, especially outdoors in the forest or on the beach. Being totally immersed in the world without clothing or armor to separate you from the world was a sensation to be longed for. Naked people hide nothing. They are not afraid of their own bodies the way I was. They are more honest than people who hide themselves or require armor against the opinions of others, particularly Southern Baptists and prudes. It is not about sex or prurient interests. It is not about who is more powerful, more wealthy, or more popular. Some naked people are very popular. But it is about understanding yourself and your connections to everyone and everything.
Still, pictures like the ones in this article can get you censored on Facebook or lose you ad revenue on WordPress,
Made from a pen and ink drawing assisted by AI Mirror and Picsart AI Photo Editor
But I actually met nudists, made friends with nudists, and corresponded with nudists since the 1980s. I spent years being a closet nudist, only naked by myself at home with all the curtains drawn. I have told those stories elsewhere in this blog. After retiring from teaching, I wrote novels with nudists in some of them, met other nudist authors, Joined some nudist websites, and tried nudism myself in public places like Bluebonnet Nudist Park, and with nudist friends. I joined the American Association for Nude Recreation, the SouthWest division. and participated in writing short stories for collections of nudist fiction that Ted Bun and Will Forrest organized for charity.
Many of my digital drawings on my tablet computer done with a stylus and drawing apps are also enhanced with the AI programs previously mentioned.
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My time as a social nudist has come to an end now, even though I enjoyed a few short years of nudism. My second bout of skin cancer has made it necessary to be an indoor nudist only My family further curtailed it to my bedroom and library only. I admit, naked fat men are not particularly beautiful to look at. But my personal beauty is not the issue anyway. My sensual connection to everything is the beauty I need to experience. My heart lives in the natural truth at the center of life
I have no regrets. I got the thing I worked hard for. I created some lovely stories because of it. And now that it is over in reality, the memory still lives on.
Another opportunity to visit the nudist park has passed without me being able to seize the day and do what I really wanted to do this weekend. It was, however, a different set of reasons than last time. Last time I was determined to go on a Saturday when more nudists would actually be present. I got sick and it rained that Saturday. So I set my sights on Labor Day weekend.
This weekend the hurricane that ravaged Houston changed my plans. You see, the storm also ravaged Port Arthur and the distribution points that local gas stations rely on for new shipments on a weekly basis. I did not see the gas shortage coming in time. The lines at gas stations and two hour waits for gas mostly all happened before I was ready to cope with it. So I was not prepared to make the trip when the time came. Gas stations are limited to selling chewing gum and promising that more gas would be available by the middle of next week.
If you haven’t realized it yet from these details that could only have happened in the past (2017,) this is a repost of one of my more popular posts from the past. But it is still relevant in that I cannot go to the nudist park again this summer for health reasons and the fact that my car is taking longer than normal to be repaired.
Yes, the boy in the picture is me naked as I might’ve been in a more sylvan youth than the one I actually had.
So I am left to sit here in my bedroom studio in the nude writing this and listening to Dvorák’s Scherzo Capriccioso on YouTube.
A scherzo is, perhaps, the perfect metaphor for an essay like this one. Most of what I write are really scherziplay (or scherzi if I hadn’t goofed on that typo in the definition) if you analyze them closely. Sprightly and humorous idea flows (at least, they make me laugh) that wax thoughtful and slightly serious at certain points. This one, the capriccioso, the capricious and mercurial idea that I have somehow turned into a nudist, is my attempt to make sense of the nonsensical, the whims and flimsy that led me to be a naked old man.
You may have noticed in my artwork a tendency to associate nudity with childlike innocence. (At least, you should have noticed if I have any ability at all as a writer and artist to guide your perceptions.) There is no sense at the nudist park that it is about sexuality and impending orgies. Those things are completely against the rules and have no place among actual nudists. You go to a nudist park and it is just you and your towel for sitting on talking to a bunch of naked people who are just as fat and old and saggy and baggy as you are, each with their own towels for sitting on. Nobody uses more than their first names and more than that is not necessary. Nudists are more open and honest than most people you meet in social situations. They literally are not hiding anything. And I have discovered that I fit right in there. It seems like the most natural thing in the world. I really enjoyed my brief time nude amongst the nudists.
Once I got past the initial embarrassment that anyone would feel in that new-nudist situation, I came to the conclusion that I have always been a nudist. Having been born a nudist, my parents and grandparents trained me not to be one, and being sexually assaulted at ten gave added horror to being naked around others that it took a lifetime to overcome. But naked is how we were created. There is a reason that Adam and Eve didn’t wear clothes in Eden.
I didn’t get to go back to the nudist park this holiday weekend. I will never convince my wife and kids to go with me either. In fact, I myself may never have another opportunity to go back there. But listening to Dvorak’s Scherzo has confirmed in me that I am a nudist and always have been. Sorry if I have frightened you with my naked ideas, but maybe you should listen to a scherzo naked and test whether you are one too.
Catch a Falling Star 
How It Should Be… According to Mickey
My bicycle was red. It was red and looked just like the ones that Captain Kangaroo had in his commercials that we watched on a black-and-white TV every day before we walked or rode our bicycle to school, across town a whole long seven blocks away. After school I could ride it out a whole mile and a half to Jack’s farm with Bobby and Richard and Mark the preacher’s kid to go skinny dipping in the cold creek in Jack’s South pasture. Jack was younger than any of us except Bobby. And it was a golden age.
Spiderman comic books and Avengers comic books cost twelve cents to own, but they were forbidden. And as much as we sneaked them and passed them around until they fell apart, usually in Bobby’s hands, we never knew that Dr. Wertham had gone to Congress to make our parents believe that comic books would make us gay and violent. He was a psychiatrist who wrote a book, so even if you didn’t believe him, you had to worry about such things.
I believed in Santa Claus until 1967. And after I found out, I only despaired a tiny little bit, because I began to understand you have to grow up. And adults can lie to you, even if they don’t do it to be mean. And the world is a hard place. And the golden age ended in November of 1963 when JFK was assassinated.
In June of 1968 I rode my bicycle out to the Bingham Park woods, Once there, I took off all my clothes and put them in the bicycle basket, and then I rode up and down the walking paths through the trees with nothing between me and God but my skin. I had a serious think about how life should be. All the while I was terrified that someone might see me. I was naked and vulnerable. A mere two years before that I had been sexually assaulted and was terrified of older boys, especially when I was naked and vulnerable. But I was a fan of the St. Louis Cardinals and Bob Gibson. They were repeated World Series winners. And they beat the Yankees in the series in 1964. And more important than that, cardinals were the little red songbirds who never flew away when the winter came. You don’t give up in the face of hardship. You face the trouble. No matter how deep the snow may pile up.
And in 1969, the first man to walk on the moon showed that a Star Trek world was in reach of mankind. Star Trek was on every afternoon after school. I watched a lot of those episodes at Verner’s house on his family’s black-and-white TV. The Klingons were always bested or beaten because the crew of the Enterprise outsmarted them. You can solve the problems of the universe with science. I know this because of all the times Mr. Spock proved it to me not just by telling me so, but by showing me how you do it. And what you can achieve is greatly enhanced if you work together like Spock and Kirk and Bones… and sometimes Scotty always did.
So, what is the way it should be? What did Mickey decide while naked in the forest like a Dakota Sioux shaman on a spirit-quest?
JFK’s 104th birthday was on May 29th. Dr. Wertham has been dead for 40 years. Bob Gibson was 85 when he passed away in October of last year. Captain Kirk turned 90 in March of this year.
The Golden age is long gone. There is no single set of rules that can clearly establish how it should be now. But I like those ideas of how it should be that I established for myself while naked on a Schwinn Spitfire in a forest long ago.
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