My Parents Took Me To A Nude Beach
And they brought my grandparents
My parents never gave me a ‘birds and bees’ talk. But one afternoon, when I was 13, I walked into my room and found a glossy medical book on my bed called “Human Anatomy”.
It had color illustrations of people in it, where you could see their internal organs, and each organ was labeled. Needless to say, this book told me nothing about where babies came from.
It just magically appeared on my bed. And nobody ever made mention of the book’s contents, or its very existence. I think it was left there strategically to replace ‘the talk’.
So you can imagine my surprise when my parents told my sister and me that we were going to take a vacation to Portugal that summer, with my grandparents, and that one of the sights might be to visit a real, live nude beach.
Nude Beaches in Portugal
While the prospect of going to a nude beach was intriguing, the idea of going there with both my parents AND my grandparents seemed like a disastrous idea to 13 year old me.
It was going to feel very awkward for me to go to a place like that with my grandfather, in particular. Aside from being one of the nicest men you would ever meet, he was also very conservative. He was the type of man who wore dress pants and a buttoned-down shirt to dinner, every night. This man was clearly no ‘swinger’.
We had a wonderful trip to Portugal that summer, and as I think about it now, it's more special to me because of the time I got to spend with my grandparents, who have since passed on.
But I do remember thinking “When are we going to go to the nude beach?”, many times throughout that trip. And up until the final night, we still hadn’t seen even one bare butt.
Not Even One Bare Butt
That night, my grandparents wanted to take our family to a nice restaurant, and they wanted to pay for it. The restaurant was very high-end, as I recall. My grandpa ordered the meal in Portuguese.
I remember that he pronounced it ‘por-tu-ges’. I had always heard people say ‘por -chu -geez’.
“Keith, I’m going to order you some flan for dessert,” he said. “You are going to love this”.
It was my first time trying this dessert, also known as ‘creme caramel’, and to this day, it is still my favorite.
I finished my food quickly, and I wanted to take a walk around and explore the restaurant, with my sister.
“Keith, you never leave the dinner table until everyone has finished eating,” he said.
So, I stayed. And we all chatted.
And my dad and my grandpa casually mentioned that we would be going to visit the nude beach in the morning, just before we flew home.
Searching For Nudes
The next day, with all 6 of us in the car, we set off to see some naked people at the beach.
It was a very hot day, and none of us were wearing our beach clothes. Nonetheless, when we got there, we took what seemed to be a long walk on the sand, looking around at the sunbathers.
They all had clothes on.
“This is a horrible nude beach,” I thought.
My grandparents got tired of walking, and they decided to sit under a shaded area. So we left them behind.
“Keep walking,” my dad said. “They must be around here somewhere”.
Bare Butts
“Look over there, Greta”.
My dad discretely pointed at a section of the beach where there were definitely some sunbathers with their tops off. My mom looked.
“Oh yes. Oh my goodness,” she replied.
I quickly strained my neck to see. Finally, this is what I came for.
And yes, there was a crowd of naked sunbathers lying on their backs, on the beach.
Each one of them was over 75 years of age, and each one of them looked like they had one too many creme caramels the previous night.
This was a disappointment.
“Keith, go stand over there.” My dad directed me, my sister, and my mom to stand in front of the sunbathers, and to smile.
He quickly snapped a photo.
Somewhere in my parent’s basement, in an old photo album, is that awesome, hilarious, awkward photo of the 3 of us, standing in front of a naked group of senior citizens.
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