RRS: National Nude Recreation Week!

Next week begins National Nude Recreation Week. Here’s an ’11 primer so none of you get caught with your pants down.

A game of 8 ball played between two naked men is still called 8 ball.

That’s just one of the things I learned during the month it took me to exhaustively research my just-posted msnbc.com story heralding National Nude Recreation Week.

It’s an evergreen kind of story I’m going to relentlessly pitch each and every year until I find a publication that’ll agree to headline it, “Hams Across America!”

I found talking to nudists over the phone is a lot like talking to fundamentalist Christians in that both are reluctant to admit any of their members might enjoy sex.

It’s an understandable reaction from starchy fundamentalists. They’ve been taught ever since Adam sex means trouble. It might explain their ardor for immaculate conception.

A deity waving a magic wand -- Bibidi! Bobidi! Boo! -- just seems so much tidier than the nuts and bolts of biological sex -- and I’m not speaking metaphorically when I’m referring to hardware. Many popular genital piercings historically involve actual bolts.

As for nuts, well, maybe I’m speaking a bit metaphorically.

The nudists went out of their way to differentiate themselves from swingers and swappers and, really, anyone that enjoyed sex.

Rules at a typical nudist resort are explicit: They don’t want anyone’s magic wands waving around.

Rules stipulate if a naked man finds himself becoming aroused he needs to cover himself with a towel, lay down on his stomach or depart the premises.

The only thing today’s nudists are interested in raising is awareness.

Almost every nudist I interviewed asked me if I were one of them. I had to say, sorry, no. I don’t share their beliefs, their values, and I wouldn’t begin to speculate on what kind of secret handshakes nudists exchange.

It was a lie.

You see, I do consider myself a nudist.

Well, let’s say I’m a situational nudist.

I’m naked whenever I think I can get away with it.

I guess in that way I’m like Bugs Bunny. He’d start out every episode naked and perfectly at peace. But as the world came crashing in on him, he’d don costumes like opera gowns or doctor’s scrubs depending on what bone-headed choices Elmer Fudd made at the time.

I’m like that. I’ve slept naked since college and still wake up everyday in the buff. I can’t recall now what motivated the choice. I wish I could say it involved dusk-to-dawn passions, but I don’t think that was it.

More than likely it involved the over-consumption of Ouzo, a powerful Greek liquor that imparted the unusual side effect of me scattering my clothes all over Athens, Ohio.

But nudity seemed to suit me or, more accurately, it seemed to birthday suit me.

I was soon naked in my dorm room, in the halls, in the laundry room and once on a dare through the length of the packed dining hall at Ohio University’s South Green in just 1 minute and 12 seconds breaking a record that had stood for 3 years.

And I was rarely near a body of water when my naked body wasn’t frolicking in the water. I loved to skinny dip.

Times change. Now the only time I’m naked is in the dark with my wife.

The main reasons I’m rarely ever naked anymore is, of course, my daughters.

Children are where I draw the line regarding nudity -- and I draw it thick in broad strokes from my hips to just above the knees.

Yet nudism still has its appeal. It sounds contradictory, but having to wear pants bums me out.

This was never more apparent than last month when we enjoyed three days at a private residence on the banks of the Chesapeake.

The magnificent house and pool were a nudist paradise, at least for the girls who enjoyed their first skinny dip. And I now have pictures that’ll refute anyone who dares call my wife a prude.

And there I was, a veteran nudist unable to shuck my preposterous baggy swimsuit.

I wondered in frustration if I’ll ever get to enjoy a real skinny dip again.

Of course, according to the obesity charts prepared by the Centers for Disease Control, the point may be moot.

I’d have to drop about 20 pounds to even qualify as a skinny dipper.

Happy 50th Birthday to these words (with profanity)!

(1,495 words)

I’m convinced the day my wife fully grasps I pay $295 every year for a virtual dictionary she’s going to smash me over the head with a $17 real one.

But I can’t help myself. My subscription to the world’s oldest and biggest dictionary is my most fond extravagance.

I justify it because, hey, it is a tax deduction, I have a still-active book proposal about how words become words and because words are a writer’s tools as surely as hammer is a carpenter’s.

It’s just that only an idiot carpenter would pay $295 for a new hammer every year.

But this is no ordinary dictionary. It’s the Oxford English Dictionary, the most venerable dictionary in the history of the spoken word. A typical 3-pound desk dictionary contains about 155,000 words. The OED includes definitions for more than 600,000 words.

More than that, it includes their precise histories and examples of them used in sentences written by guys like Shakespeare and Mark Twain.

And in what is a favorite feature of mine, it includes the word’s birthday.

It’s true. Every word you use has a birthday, a day when it officially became a word recognized by the OED.

It’s a fascinating feature. You can go in year-by-year and see when a word became a word.

So every year or so I try to go back and see which words were born that year 50 years previously. I choose 50 years because they resonate with most people alive today.

For instance, last year -- the very same year I turned 50 -- I learned that it wasn’t until 1963 that there was sufficient usage and inertia for the OED to recognize the word “dipshit.”

I choose to think of it as a flukey coincidence.

But I spent about an hour on the laptop the other night sleuthing what words were born in 1964, the year OED chose to recognize 369 new words. Many are arcane or specific to obscure disciplines. But here are 26 that still have cultural relevance, many of them more germane today than ever. It is to me a fascinating list.

Check ‘em out:

A-Team: Designating elite U.S. Special Forces and paving the way for pop culture superstardom for the inimitable Mr. T some 20 years later.

aw-shucks: Maybe the perfect expression of humble bashfulness. I’m surprised this one isn’t about 100 years old.

Beatlesque: “Characteristic or reminiscent of The Beatles.” These guys were such a cultural phenomenon they became an adjective about 18 months after their first hit single. The rapidity still stuns. I’m going to be sure to watch that Ed Sullivan 50th anniversary special on, I think, February 9.

binge drinking: I just wrote a blog post about how they keep re-defining binge drinking making it easier and easier to accomplish. I like how many new words were invented by parents to describe the excesses of their Baby Boom children.

braless: I like the thought of some demure old granny hearing the word “braless” in conversation and running off to the dictionary and being traumatized by the definition.

condo: Coming off the era of Levittown housing tracts, condos were a fresh and exciting housing option. Now, I visit my Mom in one.

dork: It’s not uncommon for my own kids to describe me as the “world’s dorkiest father.” If they are strict constructionists, they are calling me the “world’s dickiest father.” Dork is, in fact, a Midwestern synonym for penis. By the way, the OED lists 78 synonyms for penis and one day I’m going to write a blog that mentions every single one of them.

drunk-driving: Another cultural touchstone. I remember my grandfather saying how there never used to be drunk driving laws and if you were caught too tipsy behind the wheel, the police would just take your keys or drive you either home or to the town drunk tank. Then they came up with a legal term for it, got the lawyers involved and now it’s just an enormous racket from which no convivial person is safe.

GIGO: Garbage in garbage out. How come I’ve never heard this before? It’s very handy.

jive-ass: I read this one and immediately thought of the scene from “Airplane!” where Barbara Billingsley translates “jive” from two black passengers speaking in what used to be known as jive. In fact, the dictionary describes jive-ass as a person who loves fun or excitement. So I’m a jive-ass! I hope you are, too!

kvetch: I would have thought this Hebrew word was as old as Moses. I guess not. Maybe it was against his nature for Moses to kvetch.

monokini: Never heard of it? Me, neither. It’s a one-piece beach garment or swimming costume worn by women or girls; half a bikini. Let’s bring this useful one back.

motherfucker: Oh, boy. See, the OED includes all the great swear words, too. They were the very first words I looked up! Author Greg Olear wrote a really great book a couple of years ago called “Fathermucker.” Pure genius. Humans prove over and over again how creative we can be when it comes to expressing profane disdain for one another. So happy birthday, motherfucker! One more piece of mofo trivia: Grace Slick is direct a descendant of Mayflower Pilgrims and the first person to ever say motherfucker on live TV (the Dick Cavett show).

ninja: person trained in the feudal art of Japanese art of ninjutsu. Another one I mistakenly thought would have been ancient. If I was frivolous with my time, I’d delve into this one and a few others. Well, I mean more frivolous.

ooky: The only time I’ve ever heard this word meaning “unpleasant, repellent, slimy” used by adults is when it is sung in the theme from “The Addams Family.” And when did “The Addams Family" first appear on TV? 1964.

pat-down: Same meaning as it did last time you went through an airport. My first of maybe 200 travel stories I did for msnbc.com stemmed from my pitch about what people named Pat Downs think about pat-downs. It was a really fun story and I’m still Facebook friends with one very cheerful Arkansas woman named Pat Downs. I’ll link her story below.

picturephone: Today, they are ubiquitous, but the first picture phone was demonstrated as a see-as-you-talk call between the World’s Fair in New York and Anaheim, California. No mention if toddler Steve Jobs had anything to do with it.

Pop-Tart: A proprietary name for a flat, rectangular pastry with a sweet filling intended to be heated in a toaster. I’d have in college perished without the Pop-Tart. I like how that word has morphed into a pejorative description for young mostly female singers like Miley Cirus who are usually anything but flat.

pratfall: Geez, this word is only 50 years old? What word did they use to describe what Charlie Chaplin had been doing all those years ago?

sitcom: I’d love to coin a word like this. There are a lot of crappy sitcoms, sure, but good 30-minute sitcoms like “Taxi,” “Cheers,” “Seinfeld,” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” have provided me with some of my life’s most carefree moments. So we’ll always have sitcoms. Amen.

Skank: Yes, there were no skanks prior to 1964. Today, many singles bars are full of dorks and skanks. Progress? I don’t know.

skateboard: You now, I never owned a skateboard? I don’t feel deprived. I liked my banana seat bike.

skinny dip: Why this, a word to describe one of humanity’s most joyful activities, wasn’t around until 1964 makes me feel sad for all the people who came before ’64. I’ll link a skinny dip story at the bottom, too. And I’m using the word bottom purely for descriptive purposes and not to be cheeky.

superpub: Guaranteed, the dude who coined this word ended up in a few short years coming up with the word disco. A good pub never needed an upgrade. Pubs are super enough. A superpub described a once-decent bar with a dance floor and  strobe lights. I’m glad I never hear anyone enthusiastically describe my favorite hangouts as superpubs.

TV land: Not the network, yet. This referred to the state of mind. I remember the first time we learned our cable was broadcasting TV Land was Christmas Eve, I swear, in about 1998. Val was fulfilling her duties as church organist for the late service. She came home around 10 p.m., snatched the remote from my hands and started flipping through and -- lo and behold -- found “Bewitched” playing behind the little TV Land logo. We watched nothing but that channel for the next four years.  I still remember that as the night of Val’s Christmas Miracle. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her happier.

yuck: This word is just 50 years old? C’mon! Picky babies have been saying this since the shortly after the very first pea harvest.

Related . . .

My $295 dictionary

Skinny dipping on National Nude Recreation Week

CDC report on binge drinking has me re-defining binge drinking

What Pat Downs think of pat-downs

Word Quest: My mission to land a word in the dictionary

“Dipshit” & me turn 50!