Seemingly Andy was having one of the luckiest spells of his life as a high school junior. He had inherited his great-grandfather’s 1920 LaSalle. It was a classic car that his grandfather drove in July 4th parades. And he always shared his grandfather’s deep love for the antique car. Loved it so much, in fact, that his grandfather put it in the will that the car belonged to him now. On top of that, Siena, the most beautiful girl in his class had said yes to being his steady girlfriend. She had said yes to the picnic in the Arizona desert.
But not everything was wine and roses. First of all, something had come up for Mom and Dad. At the last minute, Andy had become responsible for little sister Sally, a precocious seven-year-old. The only choices available were to cancel the picnic in the desert or to take Sally along. And he was missing the gentle wisdom of Grandpa Joe more than ever now. Owning the car was nothing next to Grandpa being gone.
But for some reason, Siena had been very understanding about having to babysit Sally on their date in the desert. Andy had some seriously racy daydreams about the date in the desert and what they could get away with, but he had thought that would come to nothing with the seven-year-old inserted into the middle of it. But Siena had asked for one concession to be okay with the arrangement.
“I will welcome the chance to get to know your little sister, but you have to promise me that if I ask you to do something on this date that you might not want to do, you will agree to do it without question.”
“What… what are you gonna ask for?”
“Oh, no. You don’t get to know that. You just have to agree and do it.”
“Um, okay? I mean, I promise I will… but don’t ask me to kill anybody.”
She laughed. “You may be surprised what you like once you try it.”
That said, he found himself bumping down the road in his classic car with Siena in the passenger seat and little Sally singing the “Let it Go!” song from Frozen in the back seat.
They found the quiet place surrounded by Saguaro cactuses where Andy had planned to picnic. It was on the ranch that had once belonged to Grandpa’s best friend, and Grandpa had said repeatedly that he courted Grandma there several times. They laid out the Indian blankets for the picnic and carried the food out from the back of the car. Sally insisted on carrying one of the watermelons even though it was half as big as she was.
“Okay, the time has come,” Siena said. “We are going to take off all our clothes and picnic here in the nude. I brought sunscreen.”
“But… but… Sally is here. We can’t… I mean… not if front of Sally!”
“You promised. Besides, we are going to practice naturism, not have sex or something.”
“I… um… what?”
“My family and I are practicing naturists. Nudists if you prefer. And since you are going to be my boyfriend, you are going to have to get used to this. Family naturism.”
Sally giggled happily as she led the way, being the first one naked.
Andy learned to like it with amazing speed once he finally overcame the initial shock. Putting sunscreen on Siena was almost as good as having her put sunscreen on him. Then Siena put sunscreen on an extra-wiggly little sister. The food actually tasted better when eaten au naturel in the wild. The hot sun and the desert wind felt better on bare skin than it did on sweat-soaked clothing. And then, full of picnic potato salad, they sat there and told each other picnic stories that were even more amazing when Siena told them about nudist people having nude picnics in nudist places. There was plenty of laughter.
Once the picnic was over, they didn’t get dressed to ride in the hot old car with no air conditioning in it. They waited to get home to leap back into their clothes.
“Thanks for that, Andy. I am grateful that you were so understanding about my family’s secret.” Siena’s grin was heart-melting.
“Yeah, um… It’s gonna be a thing, ain’t it.”
“It so is…” She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek… the one on his face.
Catch a Falling Star 
Stuff That Works
What makes people visit your blog and maybe even click “like”? I should tell you up front, I have no idea how best to navigate the crazy internet. I want to. I have a book to promote. I have ideas and experiences to share. I am a writer and I would like to make something more than excessive heartache out of being one. But how you actually go about it is still a mystery.
I know what I surf the internet for. I like artwork, especially original artwork. That is why I try to post as much of my own stuff as I can. I am an amateur artist, self-taught with a little bit of college art classes, contact with real artists, and a lot of TV Bob Ross. I surf to find other artists whose stuff catches my eye. I post about artists like Loish, Maxfield Parrish, Paul Detlafsen, and Norman Rockwell. I go to sites like DeviantArt (Example at this link) and follow artists like James Brown and Shannon Maer on Facebook. I help promote their work by sharing as often as I can. Do I worry about copyright violation with my artwork? No. I am long past the point of making a profitable career as an artist. I like having people see my work and if someone decides to claim they are the artist instead of me, I have the real originals and even some pictures of work in progress. The Big Eyes thing will not happen to me.
So sharing pictures seems to matter. I got lots of hits from the monster picture post because I used a lot of monster-movie images that people normally search for on the internet. Pictures of pretty girls work too. It doesn’t seem to matter if I drew them or if they are a picture of a relative, those pictures pull people in too.
Pictures of photogenic nieces aid my blogging popularity in a rather noticeable way.
Yes, I do believe I have just intimated that Minnie Mouse is my niece, a daughter of my sister-in-law. Lying is part of blogging. You have to put spin on things and make people understand the things they want to understand more than you need them to see what is really true in the empirical sense.
Being able to put the words “nude” or “naked” in titles or in the tags brings in more views too. Those words get lots of hits on search engines and some of the people who visit my blog looking for that actually read what’s posted. Just because an idea is a little bit naughty, it doesn’t mean only perverts and bad people respond to it.
This is a picture of Rowan Atkinson as Mr. Bean. It is NOT a picture of me.
And it doesn’t hurt to be a little funny now and then. Humor is something I look for in the posts of others. I try to be funny in my posts too… though whether they are hah-hah funny or merely eeuw! funny is debatable. Much of my humor is only intended to raise a smirk or half a smile. I am most satisfied when I make you think, “heh, that’s right, isn’t it.”
This is Millis, not me. He was an actual rabbit that was turned humanoid by a scientist’s experiment with alien technology.
So why is this post called Stuff That Works if, as I am claiming, I really don’t know anything about how blogging works? I may have been a little less than truthful when I made claims. Or maybe I was claiming with a little bit of “tongue in cheek”? I hope I have demonstrated that I do know how. The thing I have yet to wrestle with is WHY. So now I have to get busy and work on that.
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