My neighbor, Wendy Wackyname, is the owner of a really big dog. I asked her how she managed a dog that was bigger than a moose and weighed more than an elephant.
“You have to be able to solve problems you never thought you could have,” she said.
“Problems like what?” I stupidly asked.
“Well, a dog that big not only chases cars, he often catches the littler ones like yours. It became a real problem when he finished chewing on them and wanted to bury them in the back yard. When we lived in Oklahoma, our back yard just wasn’t big enough, and the local police kept wondering about what might be buried there. I guess they had a lot of missing persons cases.”
“Oh, that does sound bad.”
“Yeah, but moving here solved that problem. We now live next to this nice big park with lots of room for a dog to bury stuff.”
“So he isn’t cured of chasing cars?” I asked nervously.
“No. But that isn’t the worst problem. Feeding him is really expensive. We have to buy a truckload of dog food every week. That problem has gotten worse since we left Oklahoma. There used to be a cattle ranch nearby. At least until the last of their stock mysteriously disappeared.”
I decided I should probably change the subject a bit.
“How do you walk a dog that big?” I asked.
“Oh, I don’t. I climb up on his neck and hang on to the collar as hard as I can, and we go for a run. We ended up in Waxahachie, Texas last week.”
“Does your mother ever let the dog in the house?”
“Oh, no. Foozy is an outside dog. If he wags his tail indoors, he breaks all the furniture in the room. Besides, the doors in this new house aren’t big enough for him to fit through.”
“Wendy, did you ever read those kids’ books about Clifford the Big Red Dog?”
“Oh, sure. But life with Foozy is nothing like that. Giant dogs are a much harder pet to take care of than people think.”
I remembered then how my little dog somehow managed to make five poops a day. Did Foozy do that too? And how did poor little Wendy go about bagging it and depositing it in the trash? I finally decided I didn’t want to know.
It struck me that it was hauntingly beautiful… but maybe I wasn’t entirely sure what it meant.
Catch a Falling Star 
Stupid Is as Stupid Does
This post is a reprint of the time I set out to become a nudist since I was retired and no longer had to fear what it would do to my career as a teacher.
This is not a tribute to Winston Groom and his famous creation, Forrest Gump. This is an admission that when I have had very little sleep and lots of worry lines on my brow, I often do remarkably stupid things.
And sometimes, doing something monumentally stupid makes me feel better. You know, more a part of the stupid, meaningless, and goofy world around me. So, what stupid thing did I do? I joined a nudist organization’s website. Me, who freaks out when members of my own family happen to see me naked. And, you see, there is more to joining this organization than just signing up for some random thing on the internet where you get a lot of random emails. I had to submit nude photos of myself to be posted in community forums. And I may be able to write a blog for this website, which will mean taking some camping gear and actually going to the naturist club site near Dallas to experience the things I will be writing about… and probably making jokes about. But don’t be afraid of being subjected to the hideous torture of having to see me naked. In order to see any of that, you would have to join the organization yourself, and you are probably not as stupid as me. (But I am not telling you the name of the website anyway.)
This is a detail from an illustration based on Golding’s Lord of the Flies. But it is also a picture of me and a childhood friend from back in the skinny-dipping days, based on an old black-and-white photo.
You see, I have some real life experiences with nudists before this happened. I had a roommate in grad school who liked to go au naturel, and even was comfortable with me being in the room when his girlfriend was visiting. He was nude in the kitchen one time when my grandparents came to visit. It is a good thing my grandfather entered that room ahead of my grandmother. I also had a girlfriend in the eighties who had a sister living in the clothing-optional apartment complex in Austin, Texas. Every time we visited Austin, the city nearest where my parents lived, she would stay with her sister there and I would have to go in to fetch her whenever we had plans. Sometimes I was there just to visit. But always, since clothing was optional, I took that option. I did get used to being around naked people, though. I actually have nudist friends.
So, though I am not a nudist, I guess I already know a lot about how to be one. It is how I managed to stumble into this awkward arrangement.
I know I will never be able to get my wife to go along on this harrowing adventure. She refuses to even consider going nude in the house. She has to wear clothes to bed even though studies say that sleeping nude is good for you. I will be facing this basically naked and alone. And possible paid writing work will never make this worth it by itself.
But my photos are already posted and approved. My membership is a real thing. And I am not ready to shoot myself for this stupid decision. In fact, I will probably be less naked there than I have been here in this very blog where my every secret is laid bare and made fun of on a daily basis.
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Filed under battling depression, commentary, feeling sorry for myself, humor, nudes, Paffooney, self pity, self portrait, strange and wonderful ideas about life
Tagged as bad decisions, comedy, humor, life, naturists and nudists, stupid stuff, stupidity, writing