My Life as a Sedaris Story
Sunday evening, I went up to my grandfather's house for a family dinner. My aunt, uncle, and 7-year-old cousin from upstate New York were there, as well as my grandfather, his wife, my other aunt, and my parents. There was plenty of the usual hostility and irritation, but most importantly, there was surreality.
After dinner, my grandfather demanded that we watching old Super-8 movies of the family from the 70s. As they would be featuring events before I existed, I agreed to stick around. We all piled into the basement and watched several reels featuring such exciting moments as a vacation in Wisconsin, a vacation in Georgia, my uncle's last day of elementary school, and another vacation in Wisconsin. Then my grampa puts in the last reel of the evening. "This was our family trip to Guadalupe," he announces.
What he didn't mention was that this was their family trip to A NUDE BEACH in Guadalupe. I don't know whether, in his old age, he'd forgotten that he'd taken lots of long, lingering shots of strange young women's tits and asses, or whether he's just such a hippy-ish sort of live-and-let-live type that he didn't think there was anything strange about showing this kind of movie to his granddaughters. Either way, I wasn't mature enough not to giggle, then laugh, and then nearly fall out of my folding chair at the final scene: my grampa, age 50ish, striding confidently out of the sea onto the beach, full front nude.
"Grampa!" my little cousin Lisa shrieked, running up and grabbing his knees. "You're naked! Why are you naked?"
He had no answer. The projector was turned off, and we hustled up the stairs and out the door with only the quickest goodbyes. No one knew what to say. I immediately told my sister that she missed a ground-breaking moment. This is a family oddity for the ages.
After dinner, my grandfather demanded that we watching old Super-8 movies of the family from the 70s. As they would be featuring events before I existed, I agreed to stick around. We all piled into the basement and watched several reels featuring such exciting moments as a vacation in Wisconsin, a vacation in Georgia, my uncle's last day of elementary school, and another vacation in Wisconsin. Then my grampa puts in the last reel of the evening. "This was our family trip to Guadalupe," he announces.
What he didn't mention was that this was their family trip to A NUDE BEACH in Guadalupe. I don't know whether, in his old age, he'd forgotten that he'd taken lots of long, lingering shots of strange young women's tits and asses, or whether he's just such a hippy-ish sort of live-and-let-live type that he didn't think there was anything strange about showing this kind of movie to his granddaughters. Either way, I wasn't mature enough not to giggle, then laugh, and then nearly fall out of my folding chair at the final scene: my grampa, age 50ish, striding confidently out of the sea onto the beach, full front nude.
"Grampa!" my little cousin Lisa shrieked, running up and grabbing his knees. "You're naked! Why are you naked?"
He had no answer. The projector was turned off, and we hustled up the stairs and out the door with only the quickest goodbyes. No one knew what to say. I immediately told my sister that she missed a ground-breaking moment. This is a family oddity for the ages.
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