Nudie

Once again the police feel like they're on to something big, this time in Springfield, a populous suburb upstate in Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. A man has been accused -- and therefore according to modern U.S. custom already found guilty -- of exposing himself to the public while in his own home. A woman, who according to this report "just happens" to be married to a police officer, claims to have been walking her child to school when she saw this guy standing naked, not just through one of his windows but also through a second one as well. And now the police, really trying to nail down this one, are busy circulating fliers through the neighborhood, asking any others who may also have seen him in that state of undress to also come forth. And now the damage has been done, no matter what the courts decide. Though this man claims that he was merely standing in his house fixing coffee while clothesless, he has been thrown willynilly into that black pit that no one ever escapes, the status of being considered to be a sex offender, with all the proscriptions that harry people to the end of their days, no matter what they do.

Though it could happen anywhere, I know a little something about Springfield, Virginia. In the 1960's, aided by his mother's largesse, one of my best friends was fortunate and farsighted enough to buy a house there, with 6 acres of land, and when I first started keeping bees, before I moved to Virginia, he let me keep a few hives there. Years later, as Fairfax County was making its big surge into becoming one of the U'.S.'s premier bedroom communities, he must've made a killing when he and his wife sold that property and moved to a great place in Virginia's Northern Neck, where they live right on an inlet of a bay, and now, among other amenities, they have a boat anchored right at the edge of their front yard.

But to get back to this story, there was a guy who used to live right up the road from here and whom we never really knew though he was here for years. Some other neighbors and close friends claim while driving by to have seen this guy standing in his yard in clear sight practicing his golf swing while completely nude.

Though the male half of the couple who told me this used to be a police officer himself, they never thought to report it, and in any case there were no children involved. They just thought it was an interesting topic to be dropped into a conversation, and they let it go at that, while taking great delight in having dubbed him "Nudie."

Of course I've already made my position clear. I don't know why anyone would walk around without any clothes on, period, inside or outside his house except in the obvious privacies of baths and sex. The simple act of always being clothed, which so far has not yet been outlawed or found to be unfashionable , is one of our best defenses against a huge number of outrages.