There is one time during the day when you can absolutely with a 100% guarantee count on our Juniper to go apeshit with excitement: the moment at 6:30 p.m. or so when we get her ready for her bath and the clothes (and diaper) come off. Nothing seems to provide her with the same level of joy as getting to parade around the apartment in the buff. And strangely, despite the potential collateral damage, I love doing it. I love letting her squishy little butt rest in my right hand and go from mirror to mirror, saying, "who's that NAKED baby?" When she sees herself in all that glorious nudity, she shrieks and claps her hands and smiles and reaches out to grab the reflection.

I don't know if it's the anticipation of the bath or the sheer joy of being freed from the constrictions of diaper and clothes, but there's nothing like it, man. And when she's old enough to run around and wear nothing but shoes and socks, that is going to be so much fun (and great fodder for photographs to humiliate her later).

But I have not always been so accepting of child nudity. When I was in high school, I lived down the street from a federal judge who let his 3-year old run around the yard buck naked. It made me uncomfortable, mostly because I was scared that the neighborhood pedophile was going to start getting ideas (the jerk's part of the family that runs the nation's largest Christian bookstore and "the #1 publisher of the Bible worldwide"). But damn did that little judge's son have a good time running naked around his yard!

I have since softened on the issue, but I see from a column in last Saturday's Nashua, New Hampshire Telegraph, some people are so hawkish about it that they call in the police to enforce child endangerment laws against parents who let their three year old swim naked at the beach:

Recently, Rye selectmen, police and lifeguards were urged by a local resident to force parents to keep their toddlers clothed when they splash in the surf. The astonishing thing is that it appears the selectmen and police took the request seriously. "If called to an incident, we will get the information to report to (the Department of Children, Youth and Families)," said Police Chief Alan Gould. "It may border on neglect."

What the hell? When the law gets involved, I see it it as something more insidious than a solitary asshole making comments on his own. One of the fathers in question responded better than I could:

"Have we really gotten to the point in this country where people are so afraid of each other and so ashamed of their own bodies that they can't let a 3-year-old run around naked without freaking out?" the child's father asked.

The article that inspired the column appeared on August 13, and the woman (Helen Hoffman)who reported the naughty little naked babies described the following encounter:

"She had a top on, but no bottom," said Hoffman "I said, "Excuse me, but when you bring her back to the blanket you are going to dress her, aren't you?" He said she doesn't like to keep her bottoms on. I wanted to say, "You are jeopardizing her safety." I wondered what he was getting from this. Apparently we don't teach kids private parts anymore. I'm just looking to protect these innocent little people."

I would write what my response to this bitch would have been if she said that to me, but even my own lax rules of decorum dictate that I not subject you, dear reader, to such a tirade of expletives on this fine August afternoon. I will say this: it is the child's innocence that allows her to stand bottomless on the water's edge and not know there is anything "wrong" with it. We destroy that unbelievably ephemeral innocence the second we start telling her it is wrong. This Hoffman woman is the one destroying her innocence by sexualizing her nudity. Is it any surprise that folks in a nation so traumatized by Janet Jackson's nipple-quasar thing would inappropriately sexualize the experience of a two-year old frolicking naked in the water? This shit would not happen in Europe. It is so depressing. There is something in the look of Juniper's eyes when that diaper comes off and she's wearing nothin' that I can't accurately describe. Even in the furthest recesses of my memory I can't recall a time or a place where I ran around naked thrilled at the air against my skin and not thinking at all about how I looked doing it. My parents tell a story about letting me do it, and how one of my dad's friends came over and was so upset by it that he stormed away, extremely pissed. So I can see myself doing it in that story, but I can't remember that feeling, a feeling that must be one of the closest things to pure joy that a human can experience.

How old is too old to let your kids do it? My hippie friends let their four year old run around naked. It was a hot summer, man! Where is the line between Puritanical uptightness and protecting kids from truly dangerous deviants? Or shouldn't we be thinking about how our prevailing schizophrenic sexual mores creates these deviants rather than threatening to arrest parents? When does letting your kid run around naked "border on neglect"? This is scary and very serious stuff. Remember the North Carolina couple who were arrested and jailed and their kid put in foster care because they had pictures of the father giving his naked son a raspberry on his belly developed at a drug store photo lab?

These Puritans are absolutely nuts.