The Olympics, trampolines, and why is our society so freakish?

And just when you thought nothing could get more random that synchronized diving, we decided to celebrate the Olympics at our house by starting a brand new sport:  co-ed naked trampoline bouncing.  Although I’m thinking certain anatomical challenges might make this sport less than attractive for the adult male population of our species.  Plus there’s the FCC to consider.  It would be a terrible shame if the Olympics could only air on HBO.

Actually, this sport was recently created by my son and his friends and dubbed “The Naked Show.”  Which sort of leads me to a question.  At what age is in inappropriate for children to play naked together?  And if you answered “four” its probably a good thing you don’t live close by, because my child loves to run around sans clothing.  Come to think of it, so does my hubby. 

This is honestly something I struggle with because on the one hand, you don’t want to make a huge deal of completely natural preschooler curiosities, potentially scarring your child for life.  On the other, you don’t want to operate totally outside of the social norms, potentially scarring your child for life.  So how do you find the balance gracefully?   Obviously, there are social boundaries governing this sort of thing.  Hence the reason why people don’t take a stroll through the neighborhood or go out to dinner with their special bits dangling out in the open.  Which is probably for the greater good.  Think of the extra sanitation that would have to occur involving park benches and restaurant chairs if everyone ran around naked all the time, not to mention the potential leap in the rate of crabs.  Although I’m sure your friendly neighborhood frat house would remain the easiest place to become acquainted with those.  Don’t ask about the crab races that go on there.  Seriously–don’t ask.

All joking aside, I’m actually quite angry now.  I’m angry because I had the cutest photo to go with this post, of Connor and two of his friends, jumping au naturale on the trampoline.  But then doubts started plaguing me.  What if people think I’m a horrible mother for putting a picture of my nude 4-yr-old and his friends up on the web?  What if somebody comes to arrest me for perpetuating child pornography or some other such nonsense?  Or, what if some crazy sick twisted creep found my site and completely sullied the innocence of my son’s joy?  Surely we live in a world where we shouldn’t have to worry about such things and yet here I am, with no photo. 

And I wonder if this is an issue everywhere or just in our country, with our seemingly open-minded sexuality actually masking something more prudish and repressed.  Because I think its fairly obvious there’s some kind of weird issue with nakedness here.  I mean, ponder the absurdity of this for a moment–you can see boobage galore in virtually any PG-13 movie known to man and yet a mom goes to breastfeed in public and people literally freak.  Like suddenly, the mere glimpse of a naked bosom might make them faint from the impropriety of it all.

And just to be a little more inconsistent, until recently the same full frontal nudity in women that would earn a movie an R rating or maybe even a PG-13 would get you an NR-17 if not worse when the man showed his parts.  What kind of sense does that make and more importantly, what kind of message does it send?  And what do breastfeeding and movies have to do with co-ed naked trampoline bouncing photos?   At this point I really have no idea.  My mind just works that way sometimes.

So taking a calming breath and getting back to my original topic–if anyone knows where to find the completely well-adjusted middle ground between raising a flasher versus rearing a repressed neurotic body freak, please clue me in.  Because right now, I think we’re leaning towards flasher.

Addendum—my husband is genius-like person.  He’s single handedly managed to make my photo postable while at the same time adding a little patriotic spirit:

 Although I’m pretty sure my Republican friend whose child is featuring Obama over his private parts will have a slightly less flattering name for him.