LA JOIE DE VIVRE

(PHOTO WITHHELD FOR FEAR IT MIGHT CAUSE SOME TO STUMBLE.)

Now, as a gentleman of good family I have long thought that puttering around the house shirtless was an acitivity to be looked down upon. Only Italians do that sort of thing! But last night, after tossing and turning most of the night with a fever, I woke up drenched in sweat and dizzy. I stumbled toward the bathroom where I gulped down some ibuprofen with water, and then I made a fateful decision- I took off my t-shirt and went back to bed shirtless. I'm one of those guys that always sleeps with a T-shirt on, but I have to confess that the latter half of the night, the half that I was sans T-shirt, was actually really nice. I'm a little afraid that this might be kind of a gateway activity- one night I make the innocent decision to sleep without a shirt on and the next I've purchased of a gold chain to dangle amidst my chest hair while I hang out on the porch with a bowl of peach slices and imported crackers. It's a slippery slope. I see that. I think I have heard that some even make a habit of sleeping nude (shudder)- Barabarians! I wouldn't know anything of that of course- as a gentleman of good family I never even think of such things.

I'm going to continue this experiment. In the meantime though I implore all of my readers who are gentlmen of good families to free yourselves from the stuffy chains of your imaginary taboos and putter shirtless. It's delightful!

Anyway, when I woke up this morning I stumbled downstairs shirtless to make the kids oatmeal before school. I felt liberated! Lucy stared at me, one sleepy eye peeping out from between two strands of hair (she's growing out her bangs), as she sat at the dining room table and asked,

"Daddy, why are you not wearing a shirt?"

"I've gone native, honey," I answered.

"Gone native?"

"Yep. Native."

"Daddy, what are those stripes from again? (referring to some stretch marks I have)"

"Oh those! I'm part Tiger, remember?"

"Oh yeah, but why aren't you wearing a shirt?"

Then , while I was trying to come up with a response that would fully explain my imaginary identity as a gentleman of good family as well as the inner turmoil I was feeling about being untrue to that imaginary identity by puttering around the house shirtless, Bowden and Jack entered the room wearing nothing but their scrigglies (our word for briefs). Lucy looked at them and said with a sigh (and perhaps with some disgust),

"They've gone native too."