I was doing a favor for my 87 year old grandmother today. No biggee, that’s what grandsons are supposed to do. I needed to call her cable company to order her a new cable box. To be sure I gave the company the right address, I did a quick web search on my grandmother’s name. I always mentally transpose her house number in my brain so, I wanted to make sure I got it right. The results that came back were not what I expected.
Immediately after entering my Google search for my grandmother’s name, a sequence of pictures of a highly attractive, semi-nude professional dancer popped up at the top of the search list. Knowing full-well that the woman in the pictures was not my grandmother, I investigated more closely. I owed it to myself to commit to memory how this woman, with my grandmother’s name, looked in case I ever bumped into her on the street. I needed to carefully analyze her body of work so that I could carry out a meaningful discussion with her, just in case a chance encounter ever materialized. I already had the perfect ice-breaker prepared for when we met, “Hi, you’re not going to believe this but you have the same name as my grandmother! I very much enjoy your work.” Boom. A vibrant conversation would be underway. She would feel at ease and realize I wasn’t a stalker. I would get past that sometimes awkward first conversation moment. Like preparing to talk to the President or the queen, one needs to rehearse and prepare for big moments in life like this. I checked the pictures one more time and now felt I was ready for this encounter, should it ever happen.
On a larger scale however, this got me thinking… What if those pictures had been of my grandmother? How scarred would I be now? Rather than being confident and ready to take on the world like I am now, I’d be ruined, with my past and future forever changed. I’d have seen my grandmother naked. You can’t un-ring that bell. Some things can never be unseen. How could I go to her house for dinner ever again? How could I ever look my beloved Gram in the eye again? I mean, my grandmother was an attractive woman when she was young but still, no matter what, in my mind, she has never been nude. Never. In fact, she was born with two crochet hooks in hand, an afghan in her lap, and was fully swaddled in a kitchen apron.
Few things are more scarring than seeing your parents or grandparents naked. No kid wants to think for a second about how their individual act of procreation ever took place. It’s funny how sex is awesome when it involves your own personal interactions, but horrific when applied to the thought of kin engaging in the same activity.
Internet: friend or foe? You be the judge.
