When I was young, people in our street just used to walk in to your house unannounced. I was naked when a neighbour, his wife and daughter just walked in on me, so I said 'hello' and we spent half an hour together chatting. I must have been about twelve. I was often naked around the house before then, and have been a regular home nudist ever since, but that was the first time others were present. I felt quite proud of myself not being embarrassed or trying to cover up or making some excuse.
I think you did very well on that occasion. I'm not sure what I would have done, although with my Gran in residence, I wouldn't have been naked downstairs at any time in my teenage years.
Another little tale about nudity from a couple of years later.
My mum and I were in a neighbours house soon after her husband had died and it surprised me when they started talking about sex. This was the late sixties, free love and all that, and she said how much she regretted only ever having made love to the one man, her husband.
Nothing unusual about that, but she then went on to confess that not once in her entire life had anybody seen her naked, not even her husband. She was so upset that looking back over her life there was not a single memory she had of sharing a moment, intimate or otherwise, when another pair of eyes had gazed over her naked body.
Bless her, I thought for a brief moment she was going to strip off there and then just to achieve her lifelong ambition but I was relieved she didn't, she must have been in her eighties at the time and I was a mere vulnerable teenager.
I've never forgotten the look of regret in her eyes as she said all this and I only wish there had been a way she could have found the courage to tell her husband before she lost him. I wonder how many people around today can still make such sad claims, though.
Ted