transplanted.chicagoan

July 29, 2011

New Game - Rate the Awkwardness

The game works like this -

I will share a story with you and you will rate the awkwardness based on a scale of 1 - 10. 1 being the least awkward something can be; think of when you're walking up steps with no one around and you step one extra time for a step that's not there. It's kind of weird, but no big deal. 10 is the most awkward rating on the scale; I would equate this to having seen your parents be amorous, horizontally. I certainly never have, and I suspect most people haven't (or won't admit to it), but I'm pretty sure we can all imagine that this would be a most awkward occurence if there ever was one. So, with the awkward Rating Scale out of the way, we move to the story and then you can rate the awkwardness in the comments of the post.

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Yesterday evening I had the chance to have dinner at a friends house. I hadn't seen this family or been at the house in over 6 months, but it's usually a fun time. And this evening was no exception - the food was very good, the company entertaining, the wine smooth and all in all a very good night. This friend and her husband have two young boys, a 3 year old and 21 month old. They are pretty energetic youths and this night was no different. By the end of the evening, about 8pm, they were sort of winding down and wanted to do something they do often, "dump truck races".

It sounded like something fun to me and I soon realized what this game entailed. The boys literally race toy dump trucks (think Tonka truck) around their dining room table. There's carpet on the floor that resembles the race track, the dad announces the racing and gives the boys the "ready, set, go" commands, and the mom just generally cheers them on. A pretty clever game as not only do the kids really love it, it wears them out just that last little bit before bed time. Very smart.

So, all seemed well to me as they started this process, when I heard a whisper or two from the boys about... "naked time". Yep, like some kids are known to do, these young lads get naked pretty often. So, once the first utterance was heard about being free from clothing, the clothes came off both boys within three steps in the dining room as the lined up their racing dump trucks.

So there I was, hadn't seen the family in months, slightly inebriated from wine with dinner, about to watch two boys run around their living room totally nude. I didn't think I could make an exit without offending or giving them the idea that nudity is wrong... so I just stood there and watched, and laughed. At one point, I even started using an annoucer voice and started them off. Must have started the "race" a dozen times in about 5 minutes. The races aren't too long and no one ever seemed to be the actual winner either. Of course, we were all winning at that point. Well, they must have ran around the dining room table about 50 times, totally naked, bent over a small toy dump truck. The most interesting part was when someone came to their front door. Mom opened the door to see who it was and the littlest boy just walked right up to the door, in his b-day suit. How unique must it have been for that visitor to see a 21m old come to the front door totally naked.

We all had fun and maybe it's actually only my own feelings on nudity that I was dealing with... the boys sure didn't seem to care one way or the other.

"On your Marks ... Get Set ... GO!!!!"