Springtime Cover Up

Spring is upon us with daylight savings time, trees abloom, the Braves back around. It’s mostly a wonderful thing, full of rebirth literal and symbolic, Purim baskets and Easter eggs. My first few eye level greetings with the great fuzzy carpenter bees and bumble bees around the yard are always a happy occasion to say hello to a new world aborning.

But all is not good with Spring. Gathering clouds of pollen swell eyes and sinuses, warmer temperatures bring air conditioners to life and power bills on the rise. It also means that everyone and his brother-in-law feel perfectly justified to break out their short shorts, jog without their shirt, and bring forth all of that flesh they’ve kept covered up through the cold, cold Winter. The pale wobbly glare coming off of legs and shoulders that haven’t seen the sun since Indian Summer are just awful. 

Do you really think we want to see all that? At what point did everyone start wearing what they lounge around the house in to just about everywhere, church, dinner out, Grandma’s funeral?

Hey pal, I’m glad you’re jogging down my street. It’s good for your cardiovascular system, pumps up those endorphins. It makes me feel a little guilty about standing here watching, instead of participating, and that’s OK. I’m sure that you feel Chariots of Fire free, wearing those hot pants and going shirtless, your glistening torso dripping sweat. 

But I have no desire to look at it, neither do my wife and child. Cover it up. Maybe I am becoming my father or that old man who yells for kids to “get off my lawn!” But is it that much of a sacrifice to wear a shirt, tank top or some other sort of shmatte? I don’t really want to see your nipples or chest hair or back tattoo, even if you look like the Old Spice guy, let alone the average flabby Joes I often see parading up and down my Powers Ferry Road area.

Short pants used to be the domain of small schoolboys. But desert fighters in World War II, and California surfers in their baggies paved the way for the Casual America we live in today, where grown men wear tennis shorts to church and their kids show plenty of leg when it’s 28 degrees and sleeting.

I suppose I should just give in to modern times and go with the flow. Over the years I’ve been confronted by everything from Zubas to crocs, slapping flip flops, tramp stamps, big hair, no hair, chartreuse hair, pierced body parts. I guess an overexposure of pale winter skin parading down my block shouldn’t be any big deal by now.

But daily personal interactions can be uneasy, whether it’s a null and void customer interchange at the local big box retailer or the sometimes forced bonhomie of casual social get-togethers where you don’t know everyone. It doesn’t make it any easier when I have to avert my eyes from your overexposed skin. Show a little decorum. I don’t expect people to run around dressed like the Amish or a full-on Taliban burqa  get up. 

But cover yourself up a little, or at least work up a bit of tan to keep the blinding glare from coming off of your winter-pale flesh. This is Cobb County, not Paradise Valley. I don’t want to know that much about you.