Greta’s Story: Junior Year
A Naked In School Tale
by Chessman
I woke up in Sam’s condo on the third morning of my junior year of high school and found myself slightly disoriented. I of course expected to wake up in the long cotton-wool-blend flannel nightie that came to my ankles, and to awaken in the home the church provided for its pastor and his family.
Instead I woke up under a light blanket, (warm but very lightweight) and stark naked. I looked around, shocked that it wasn’t my old room, nor was it my old life. I remembered then, this was Sam Kramer’s condo; I was in her spare bedroom, now officially my bedroom, and I had committed myself to remaining nude for the rest of the school year.
I climbed out of bed and padded my way bare foot into the bathroom I was to use. Sam had two in the condo; one attached to her master bedroom and this one at the top of the stairs. There was another half bath, just a commode and sink, in a closet type room between the kitchen and garage on the first floor. On the second floor, in addition to my room and the master suite, there was an alcove with a desk and a laptop computer. Sam told me this was my study area and my computer was slaved to her printer downstairs in her home office. My parents had believed computers and the Internet were tools of the devil and had never allowed one in the home. To be able to do my research and gather information at home instead of having to sneak to the public library (another den of iniquity and filth according to my father) was a sheer luxury for me.
It had taken all of two nights in Sam’s house to realize how relaxed the dress code was. Sam’s idea of formal wear was a to-the-knee robe tied loosely at the waist with a sash-type belt. Sports wear and casual wear were the same style. Usually Sam stayed naked. I could not possibly be uncomfortable with my nudity when this gorgeous thirty-two year old school nurse was right there setting the example.
Sam’s condo was one of twelve, built three on a side, forming a square with an open courtyard in their center. It was here that the pool, hot tub and sun decks were located. Additionally, each condo had a courtyard-facing balcony off of the master bedroom. From the activity around the pool last evening I gathered the condo association was either nudity accepting or clothing optional. Sam took me around and introduced me to several men and women and explained I was her ward and would be staying with her for a while. I had never had to hug so many naked women nor shake hands with so many naked men in my life. That would change as time went on of course but for only my second full day as a committed nudist it was weird.
The previous night I thought I embarrassed Sam to death when I needed help with a calculus problem in my homework. I yelled into the next room, “Mom!”
She came at a run and said, “What?”
“OMG I’m so sorry,” I said.
“For what, little one?”
I tried to cover with, “For disturbing you from what you were doing.”
She grinned at me and stroked my shoulder. “I am not your mother, but since we met in your sophomore year I have loved you as if you were my daughter, so do not worry if that slips out once in a while.” She then saw the calculus problem suggested a way to solve the problem and we both relaxed into our relationship.
The next afternoon following school she and I went shopping at the local drog store and she picked up some stuff I’d never seen nor heard of before. When we got home, she put me in her tub in the master bedroom suite bathroom, and proceeded to show me how to groom myself. She used a very narrow electric razor to trim my bush back to a light stubble, and a hair removal crème on my legs and backside. Wow, I had never felt this naked, naked, before. When she told me I had gone from cavewoman to modern twenty-first century teen-ager in the two hours we had spent in the bathroom my response was a long drawn out, “Sam.” She, as our relationship gained time and experience, was fond of telling everyone that, “SAM” yelled in certain tones and at certain volumes with many facial expressions accompanying it could mean everything from “I’m in pain to you are embarrassing me.”
I was concerned that the next day was another community service day, Candy Striping at the nursing home, and I was now really nude. Sam lovingly asked, "Except for Henrietta how did the folks react on Monday?" When I told her that everyone else just accepted it as part of my school work (I didn’t tell her how happy some of the women were to reap the benefits of my being on display for the men) and it did not stop me from doing my assigned work, she told me I should just go and be honest with the residents.
Well, first I had another whole day of classes to get through. Sam drove an older jeep with a convertible top. So strapped in to the passenger seat, with her next to me in her nursing uniform driving, I rode wind in hair and on bare skin to school with her.
About twenty percent of the student body had opted for the ‘all nude all the time’ program participation. Among them was Barb Adams, who had warned me what to expect while walking to school the first day. Barb’s parents attended the church my father pastored; her father was on the Trustee Board and her mother taught Sunday school there. She and I shared first period class and before the bell rank she asked me to see her after class ended.
“How are things going,” Barb asked first as we walked together down the corridor.
“It’s a little weird, I woke up this morning and didn’t know where I was at first, but Sam, er, Nurse Kramer, has been very nice and supportive, Barb, so I’m getting by, how are you doing?”
“Great,” she giggled. “The church has been rotating the trustee board meetings in members homes while the administrative wing is being redone. Last night they met in our house. Mom had me serve the snacks, just as I am, and I realized afterward that she did it to gain a measure of support for you,” Barb paused, “nine trustees and Pastor in attendance. The only one offended by my natural state was Pastor. He went on a diatribe about how the human body is sinful and should not be gazed upon, not even between married couples who should pray forgiveness every time they lusted for each other’s flesh. Mom walked in then, she had quietly stripped in the kitchen, my Dad rose and hugged her close and told Pastor to his face that anyone who considered the sight of his wife and daughter offensive was not welcome in his home. Only Pastor and one other trustee rose to leave. When they had gone the balance of the board discussed how pastor had treated you and what they had just observed. They voted and all eight were in agreement, Pastor should request a transfer and resign this pulpit.” Finishing with a smile, she added, “Everyone would welcome you back, naked, whenever you wish to return, Greta.”
“Thanks, Barb,” I said, “I do so love you and your Mom and Dad for taking a risk and taking a stand against that rigid opinionated bigot; however, I don’t think I’ll be returning to that church for a while.”
“Well, you are welcome in our home for dinner or to visit whenever you wish,” Barb winked, “just as you are without one stitch. I’ll be there that way also, you know, and bring Sam too; Mom and Daddy would really like to meet her.” Barb peeled off down the side corridor to her next class while I continued on to my next one with a smile on my face. I had a friend my age, who was also living the naked life style and her folks were accepting of the changes going on in the world around them.
I stuck my head into the Nurse’s office and seeing no one there waiting to see her I knocked on Sam’s office door.
“Enter.”
“Hi, Sam, I just saw Barb Adams and her folks want us to come to dinner some day soon. Gotta run, class in three minutes.”
The saucy seniors in the nursing home were so happy to see me. I wheeled my cart from room to room, delivering magazines and books, but what they really wanted was for me to sit on the foot of the bed, or in a chair and chat for a while. One of the aides told me later that while the nudity didn’t hurt at all, what they enjoyed most was my openness and willingness to let them be a part of my life. Several of the residents had grand children and in one case a great grandchild who were either just coming of age for Program participation or in the Program themselves. I could sense that some of the questions they asked me were so they would have answers for their own families. Yes, and the bonus was the guys were stimulated sufficiently by the end of my visits that the women ‘got some’ that night. I still can’t wrap my head around that one. My first workday at the residence, following the incident with my father, I found out that Henrietta, the woman who had ratted me out to my father, had been moved to a different wing of the facility.
The two new women in Henrietta’s old room were in their sixties. One had suffered a stroke and was going through rehabilitation and the other had lost a leg in an accident. She was waiting for a prosthesis leg and also going through physical therapy. Sarah and May would become important to my life as junior year went on. Both of them had pool therapy as part of their physical rehabilitation. I could not swim, my father had decided long ago that swim suits were tools of Satan to allow women’s flesh to be exposed to the lustful eyes of men, but I was scheduled for swim class in the spring half of Junior year. The pair of them got me assigned to transportation on their therapy days and I would wheel them in their wheelchairs to the pool and wait for the sessions to be finished so I could wheel them back to their room. Sarah, who had the stroke, went into the water and the therapist held her with a harness device that allowed her to move her arms and legs in a swimming motion.
The therapist seeing my rapt attention as to what she was doing, invited me into the pool. She hooked me to the device and showed me how she could tension it or relax it allowing the ‘swimmer’ to work his or her muscles, but the therapist maintained control so the swimmer was never at risk of sinking or drowning. I told her I was a non-swimmer and was afraid to put my face in the water at all. May, who before her accident loved water aerobics, yelled, “If we have to relearn how to swim, Greta, you have to learn too.” So began six weeks of them watching me hooked up in the harness that they also used, gradually going from doggie paddle to a reasonable freestyle over stroke. Just before the pair of them was discharged I swam the length of the pool on my own. The cheering from the therapists and the two women almost made me forget what I was doing. Fortunately by that time I was out of the deep end and on my way back to the shallow when that happened.
By November, the district superintendent of the denomination had reassigned my birth parents and a younger, more receptive, pastor called to take charge of the church. The church started a coffee house every other Friday, which they called the Oasis for teens in and out of the Program to gather and interact in a safe haven. Sam and I attended several times that year when they had live groups entertaining. The Adams’ had spread the word that I was now using Greta Demure as my name and I was always welcomed as Greta, my old raw wounds left behind by years of parental abuse were slowly healing.
Sam’s mom, who insisted I call her Gramma Kramer, came for a visit the week of Thanksgiving. I gave up my room for her and Sam moved me in with her in her king sized bed for the five nights of her visit. From the time Gramma arrived the first day until she retired to bed she was dressed in a knee length dress and sensible shoes. Intent on baking fresh apple and peach pies for Thanksgiving dinner, Gramma was up first the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. I heard the shower close down and waited for the bathroom door to open and close before I snuck out of the covers, carefully lifting Sam’s arm off of my waist, to go pee. Thus relieved, I wandered down stairs to the kitchen to get some orange juice and maybe a piece of toast and walked in on a sight that stopped me cold.
Gramma Kramer, wearing nothing but an old fashioned apron was hard at work on the dough for the piecrusts. I coughed and got her attention, she turned, “Good morning, dear, you look lovely, as always, would you like pancakes for breakfast?”
“Yes, please,” I said, and used to making them for Sam offered, “may I help you?”
“No dear, I know Sam is not much of a cook, and I know that you have been caring for her as much as she has been caring for you. While I’m here you relax and let me care for the both of you.” Gramma made me sit got me a glass of juice and a cup of coffee and we chatted. Turns out Sam was raised by a couple of nudists who owned a time share at Sun Tan Valley Naturist Vacation Resort, Gramma continued to spend the summer there even after her husband passed away and her daughter went off to college. The apron was to prevent flour and other ingredients from getting into her hair, her pubic hair, because it was such a mess to get out later.
She told the usual parents embarrassing their children stories about Sam when she was a girl and she had me laughing so hard I needed to use the half bath off the kitchen to pee again. When I returned to the kitchen, Sam was sitting in her usual chair muttering, “Mother, you did not tell Greta THAT story, please tell me you didn’t.”
“Which story, Sam,” I asked in impish innocence.
“Never, you mind which story,” she sort of gargled and her mother and I laughed even harder.
We spent the day running errands and doing chores around the condo and all three of us relaxed for a while in the hot tub. When Gramma went to bed, she hugged me tighter than anyone ever had, and whispered, “You are so good for my daughter and you are so loved, by her and by me. Never forget that.”
As I slipped into Sam’s bed later, Sam turned to me and said, “Greta, you need to know that if I had been able to bear my own child, I could never have gotten one I could love more than you, thank you for letting me part of your life.”
I cried myself to sleep with happiness that night.
Thanksgiving night my ‘other’ education began. I heard noise coming from Sam’s side of the bed and rolled over to find her fingering her lower lady parts. “Oh”, I said and rolled back over to give her privacy to finish.
When she had, she tenderly asked if she had embarrassed me. I told her no I just thought maybe she had a bellyache and needed something to relieve it.
As soon as the words came out we both realized the unintended double entendre I had uttered and laughed so hard we must have awakened Gramma in the next room, for she knocked and then walked in to Sam’s room to find out what the noise was all about.
“Greta caught me satisfying myself, Mom,” Sam admitted to her mother.
“I thought she was sick and I wanted to see if she needed help,” I said sheepishly, which set all three of us off again.
Gramma shocked me when she asked, “Do you take pleasure in your own release, little one?”
“I know girls do, and I know how from Sam’s lectures, but no I never have,” I blurted.
Gramma snuggled in on my left and Sam was still on my right and the two of them went to work on me. Sam supported me in a half sitting half reclining position and Gramma did all the work. Slow circles around my nipples with her thumbs were followed by butterfly kisses down my stomach before tender loving hands stroked my thighs to separation and then it was Gramma’s fingers dancing on my clitoris that brought me groaning to my first massive orgasm. Sam’s mom’s touch set me off to a second. To say I slept very well that night is an understatement and when I woke needing to pee, I was still sandwiched between my foster parent and her mother. For the first time in my life I realized I felt loved, safe and secure.
Friday morning over coffee the three of us talked. Sam told me that in her position of authority over me, she would never touch me sexually. Short of that I was to feel free to masturbate myself whenever I felt the need. Further, I was allowed to watch Sam when she felt the need arise as well. Gramma smiled and said, “It is simple little one, it is an itch and when you itch you scratch.” That got an,’ew, gross,’ out of me and both older women laughed.
Gramma quietly told me, that afternoon while Sam went for groceries, why Sam could not have children. Her husband, a football player for the college they both attended, had strong anger management issues. Sam had been openly bi-sexual all of her life, but chose to marry her boyfriend. While on their honeymoon he had caught her chatting with an attractive pool attendant and assumed Sam and the other girl were going to get together for lesbian sex. He caught Sam in their room and beat her badly then kicked her in her pubic area several times so hard her uterus ruptured. He went to jail, she went to the hospital and had her uterus removed to stop the bleeding internally. That was ten years ago.
Sam, who wanted a family desperately, could never have a child of her own. She changed her career track from surgical nursing to school nursing and counseling, just to be around the children she could not have. She trained as a foster parent for the same reason. “Now,” Gramma whispered, “she has the little girl she always craved. I’m happy to say I also have a granddaughter I adore.” She kissed me, and I hugged her in return. Wow, did I feel loved, safe and secure.
Friday night Sam, Gramma and I attended the Thanksgiving football game at the high school stadium. We watched as the cheerleaders did their routine nude, and the color guard lead the marching band on to the field at half time with Barb Adams, holding the school flag in the leather flag holder stark naked. After the game Barb and her folks and the three of us met at the church coffee house to chat. It was cool, the two high school kids naked, the adults clothed and just talking like friends and family do about this and that and the other thing.
Barb mentioned to me that the new pastor was thinking of adding a clothing optional youth service to the Sunday morning schedule and if I would be willing to come back to church she would happily attend that service with me. I looked at Sam, who knew this place was a hurtful memory for me, and she said, “It might help with the healing process Greta, why not try it for a week or two and see if you can reconcile the past to your new present.”
The services were to begin in January, after the New Year. I agreed to go with Barb for that month of Sundays and make a decision whether to continue on the first Sunday of February.
December was a blur. Preparations for midterms, preparations for Christmas both at the nursing home and at Sam’s place and preparations for the first annual trek to Gramma’s house for Christmas ate up my waking hours. My resident’s got a kick out of me wearing a pointy elf cap and elf ears around the nursing home the week before Winter break began. I got several pats on the bum along with requests of a somewhat blue or off color nature for what the old guys wanted for Christmas. Bill and Steve had always looked but never touched. The Friday before I was to be away I let them run their hands over my body touching me wherever they wished. I don’t know about them but I was certainly aroused, I left them with, “Merry Christmas, boys, and think about me when I’m away.” The smiles on their faces assured me they would.
Martha and Gladys were delighted I could spend a few extra minutes chatting with them and they asked questions about the Program and whether I had done it yet because of the program.
“Nope, girls, happy to report I am still a virgin, and unless the guy asks me to marry him, I hope to stay that way. Although I have learned to do a few other things to keep them happy,” I winked and left them laughing as I left their room.
The rest of my shift went pretty much the same except in room seven. The woman in that room while accepting of my nudity had always been standoffish. I walked in to her room, her name was Theodora, but everyone called her Teddy, and said, “How is my Teddy bear today.”
She smiled and patted the edge of her bed, something she had not done before, and opened up, “Greta, all my life I have been a lesbian. When my lover died and I was left alone I came here, hoping to find companionship, not sexual but friendly companionship. But, I found myself lonely in a crowded room. Then you walked into that room and everyone brightened up and wanted a moment of your time. When you left, the conversation was about you, how your confidence had increased, how lovingly you cared for our needs, how funny you were poking fun at us and yourself and just how alive you made us all feel. I was able to find common ground and chat with the others about you and they became a lot more receptive and accepting of me in return. Now, here is my Christmas wish. I know you have been letting the men touch you as their Christmas gift from you. Would you let me have the same gift?”
Gramma had been the only woman to ever touch me and arouse my pleasure centers, but Teddy was also special to me. I nodded yes and moved up the bed closer to her hands. I almost didn’t ever want to leave her room. This woman knew what she was doing and had me climbing the walls in less than three minutes. I kissed her forehead and thanked her; she smiled and said, “No, dear, thank you for making this old girl feel alive again.”
Sam picked me up at the end of my shift; she had our backpacks in the rear of the jeep and was holding what looked like a long t-shirt in her hands.
“You are officially off of the school clock and not in the Program until opening bell in January, and the airline would be correct in their turning you away at the security check point if you were to try to fly naked.” My foster parent told me holding out the mint green garment. I slipped it over my head, the first clothing I’d worn since September, and it felt weird and not in a good way. “Can’t wait to get to Gramma’s and get this thing off,” was my response. Sam laughed.
Gramma picked us up at the airport, driving an ancient Volvo station wagon, and after hugs, kisses, and a “can I get naked yet?” from me we piled in for the ride home to Gramma’s house. Oh, by the way, the answer from both of them was a loud, “NO!”
I actually threatened to roll down the window of the Volvo back seat and shout to the state trooper in the other lane, “Help I’m being kidnapped by two women who are forcing me to wear clothes.”
Gramma ended my threat with, “Sweetie, this state has not legalized the Program yet. It is due for implementation next September starting in the middle schools, if you were to run around naked now, you would get arrested.”
My response of, “OH POOH!” almost caused an accident with the two of them laughing so hard.
Gramma’s place was fantastic. It had once been a working farm for tomatoes peppers and the usual summer salad type veggies. When Gramma lost her husband to cancer, she could not work the acreage alone and she had replanted the fields with pine trees of several varieties. Some were harvested each year for Christmas trees, while the stand of white and yellow pine was maturing for sale as lumber timber. Two acres of scrub pine were growing for the turpentine and pulp paper industry. Gramma did none of the work, contracting out to a timber company and the Christmas trees were ‘cut your own’.
The farm’s house was nine rooms of tasteful country living. Gramma’s kitchen was larger than Sam’s entire second floor at home and the five bedrooms were all as large as Sam’s master bedroom suite.
Sam returned to the room she had used until she left for college, and the one to which she returned following her failed marriage and her surgery. Gramma assigned me the one next to Sam’s. They had a connecting bathroom between and if we left the doors open it was like one huge suite. Gramma’s room was across the hall and the connecting bedroom on that side was used as her home office.
I looked out the window into the yard, and wow again, Gramma had a lap pool, hot tub and a sauna out back along with the biggest deck with a huge outdoor grill/kitchen. A volleyball court and horseshoe pitch completed the yard area. An eight-foot cement block privacy wall separating the personal quarters from the working farm surrounded it.
I yelled to Gramma, “Now can I get naked and go for a swim?”
Sam and her mother responded at the same time, “YES!”
That was how we spent our winter break; all three of us Kramer women [Gramma included me as one of them] naked, sunning by the pool, pitching horseshoes and Sam teaching me how to play volleyball. Gramma later told me she went to college on an athletic scholarship for volleyball and Sam, even after laying off of the sport for several years, was still a fine coach and player.
I only received two gifts for Christmas that year. Sam gave me an I-pod nano, preloaded with a ton of my favorite music and Gramma gave me the keys and title to the Volvo. Turns out she had a brand new BMW Cayenne in the garage and had been planning this surprise for over a month with my sneaky foster mother working behind the scenes to keep it hushed up.
Sam taught me to drive a stick shift on the jeep up home, so I had no problem mastering the Volvo gearbox. To say I was happy as a clam in a mucky bed of sand would be an understatement.
One of the loggers was an over the road trucker in the slow season for timbering and had made room in his trailer to take the Volvo up to our house during his run in January. Wow, was I a happy girl.
Browner from the sun, fatter from Gramma’s cooking [Gramma’s mantra is ‘eat you’re too thin’] AND happier than I ever thought I could be only three months before, I slipped into the t-shirt dress for our return flight to home, missing Gramma already.
Sam and I took the Volvo to motor vehicle to get license plates and change the registration to our state from Gramma’s and I could not understand why Sam was laughing so hard when we put the new plates on the car. My plates were SAC-B52, which Sam explained to me were the initials for the United States Air Force Strategic Air Command, and the airplane they flew the legendary B-52 bomber.
From that point on my Volvo had her name. She was christened the Blue Bomber with a bottle of ginger ale poured over her hood, that very night. Sam equipped the Blue Bomber with an I pod dock and added the GPS application to the I pod. Since it also doubled as a hands free phone I couldn’t get lost nor be out of contact with Sam while driving. She had a GPS tracker program in hr laptop and would know at any time I was in it where the car was. As this system book marked every location that the car was placed into park, Sam would have a reasonable idea where I was even when I was out of the car.
Her reasoning was a naked girl driving a car and that was reason enough.
The car, Barb Adams and volleyball ate up what little free time I had after extending my hours at the nursing home. Without the car I had only been able to work three p.m. to six p.m. With the car I added an hour to weekday afternoons and the facility offered me nine dollars and hour to work eight a.m. to eight p.m. on Saturday. Sam was covering my insurance, but I had to pay for my own gas. My after tax paycheck for Saturday would take care of that nicely. Barb and I hung out all the time we could. Usually just Golden Arches drive through for milk shakes and fries or some other garbage teens ingest without thinking. Then sit and talk, about boys, about school, about being naked all the time and about our lives. Barb was coming to grips with the fact she liked boys but she loved girls. Sam, Barb and I had a long talk at our kitchen table about the responsibilities of being an out of the closet bi-sexual. Sam drew on her own painful experience and its consequences when counseling Barb about the life style.
“So it is easier to love one or the other but not both?” I had asked them while we were discussing all of this.
“As an example, and if you are then it makes a bigger difference, let’s say you and Barb are lovers,” Sam began and Barb and I looked at each other and grinned. “Sam we are not, but we’ve talked about that possibility many times,” I told my foster parent.
“I would welcome Barb into the family with open arms if that is what you choose, Greta,” Sam told me and both Barb and I blushed down to the perky tips of our naked breasts.
“But getting back to the example, you and she are lovers. Then one of you decides to take a man as a partner on the side. You know that each other are clean; you are both virgins and have only played with each other exclusively. But, where has the boy been? With whom and how often and how many whoms have there been? Who had they been with before him, and so on. One of you could pick up a disease from the other due to the added sex partner in the mix. Or what if the same thing happens to you that happened to me, a jealous lover thinking your cheating with another girl or boy hurts you physically? It is possible. So, yes, being bi-sexual is a serious lifestyle choice.” Sam left it at that rich food for thought needed processing to digest.
Barb slept over that night in my room, and all we did was talk and sleep, eventually. The talking took up most of the night.
The new pastor of the church, the Reverend Doctor Dalton, BA, Mdiv, ThD, seemed a bit pretentious to me at first. After all here were eighty or so young people and their parents in the pews about sixty of the kids naked like Beth and me and he marches up the aisle in his preacher robe with the cowl like hood of his seminary indicating his doctorate.
We sang “For The Beauty of the Earth” and the creation story was read from Genesis then we sang “This Is My Father’s World” an offering was received and Doctor Dalton stepped to the pulpit to preach.
“I hope you all enjoyed seeing my ego clothes,” he said brushing the front of the velvet trimmed ecclesiastical robe. He then unclasped the frogged buttons at its collar and let it drop around him. He was naked under it. “For at this service that is the last time you will see it.
“Now, look closely, and I’ll point to my warts, my scars, my blemishes and my faults. My physical ones not my spiritual or emotional ones.” That got a laugh from all of us.
“Am I perfect, not hardly. I am created in God’s image, but created from the clay of the earth and nothing so formed can ever be perfect. Beautiful yes, but never perfect. Adam and Eve looked upon each other after sharing the fruit of the tree and realized they were naked and covered themselves. Two things went wrong here, first they disobeyed God and ate of the fruit He had asked them not to partake, second, and this is equally important, they saw what was natural as sinful. They did, God didn’t because God asked them why have you clothed yourselves? Their answer saddens the Lord and they were expelled from the garden wearing the hides of animals God had to slay to provide them cover.
“We have taken a step back to reclaiming our right to be naked and to celebrate our creator as he has created us. Look about you at the young women and men in the congregation and at those others who have taken the message that nudity is not sexuality but the natural state God desired for us.
“I have been asked, Pastor, how can you reconcile nudity with the Gospel. My response has been and shall continue to be when we pray to our heavenly father we do so as his little children, when we praise our heavenly father we do so with the excitement and enthusiasm of a child, a child should never be afraid to be naked in front of his or her parent. I know I am not afraid to face my heavenly father just as I am and I hope none of you will be either.”
He closed the service with the hymn, Just As I Am, and we exited through the normal reception line to thank him for the service. He seemed genuinely pleased that I was there with Barb and told me he hoped to see me the following week.
He did and I dragged Sam with me. We did not attend every Sunday, but between the coffee house and a couple of services a month our faces became fairly well known at the church. Not that mine wasn’t already, but now I was there as I wanted to be there not because I was forced to attend every time the doors were open by my father.
Spring break came in April and we went to see Gramma again, Barb’s parents were going on a cruise and Sam invited Barb along for the visit. A week with Gramma just isn’t enough. She is hysterically funny when you get her started on the days when being a nudist was as hidden as being gay, her line about, having to go into the clothes closet to get naked, had Barb and I doubled over and the tales about Sam as a kid trying to explain to her classmates after gym why they had tan lines and she didn’t, were priceless.
Sam told her that just one more word would force Sam to tell the Bridge Club story. For some reason Gramma changed the subject and we talked about menus for the rest of the week and who wanted to bake pies the next morning.
Our return from Gramma’s left six weeks on the school calendar and we began to wind down the year with the usual high school activities, our annual musical was Hair, I wasn’t in it but Barb was, I was asked to Spring Formal by a textile boy and accepted. Night of the dance He showed up with a wrist corsage for me and asked me if he could leave his trench coat at Sam’s. I shrugged and said sure; when he removed the coat he was naked underneath it. Sam took pictures, embarrassed me, embarrassed my date and acted so mother-like I wanted to strangle her.
I had a midnight curfew, and I made it home at eleven forty-seven. Thirteen minutes of heavy petting and kissing later I was inside the house just as the last chime on the hall clock announced pumpkin time.
The following Tuesday we were in court, Sam and I, to finalize Sam’s adoption of one Gwendolyn Kramer. That’s what my new birth certificate read, with Sam listed as my mother [no father named]. Gramma had come up for the ceremony and while everyone still called me Greta [I liked it] I had come far enough distance to accept my first name on legal documents.
As I mentioned before I had picked up volleyball from Sam. The high school coach spotted me while I was playing a few pickup games in the practice yard at the school. She approached me about playing on the second squad the team used for pre-game practices. The second squad studied the other team’s game films and tried to play the practice games with the same style as the opponent the varsity girls would face later in the week.
Thanks to the Blue Bomber I could do it. I would leave the nursing home, make it to practice, play several sets of volleyball and go home in time to shower, do a bit of homework and go to sleep. At the annual sports dinner and awards program in late May I was awarded a junior varsity letter and was given the offer of a spot on the varsity team for the next year.
School ended the final Friday of May. Summer would bring many new adventures.
The End