Sally Huggins Toner

My friend Anna shared a meme on Thanksgiving that I can’t get out of my head.

“Eat like no one is going to see you naked.”

I’m almost 50. And pretty boring. And life is pretty hectic at Chez Toner. So I’d say that meme is a distinct possibility in the near future and a nice bit of permission. Though it got me thinking about the different definitions of naked and the necessity of exposure.

There’s nekkid…you know, the original skinny dipping, streaking, locker room prancing, down to your birthday suit state. The state that brings up all the body image issues I’ve had since middle school. Except, when you get down to it, we all look pretty ridiculous without clothes. Isn’t that the story of Adam and Eve? When they realized the truth of their bodies…weren’t they…ashamed?

Or did they laugh? More on laughter later. The other definition of naked is “armorless.” Vulnerable. That’s what I am considering during this holiday season. Being without clothing leaves us open to the elements. We chafe, we bruise, we burn. It’s a rough world out there. Why would we leave ourselves open to injury? It’s a valid question. What are the advantages to walking the world unprotected?

I have seen the original Michelangelo’s David. I remember walking around the statue, looking at the proportion, the perfection in every muscle of his arms, his hands (okay, stop giggling. Again, I’ll talk about laughter later)—the perfection of everything.

And then I cried.

We all know the nakedness of that art isn’t real. Exposed skin, true vulnerability…it’s lumpy. It’s mottled. It’s far from perfect. That’s why it frightens us. That’s the challenge, as I see it, for this holiday season. To reveal a little more of our need. To be willing to listen to the needs of others. To be a little more naked.

I’ll fess up to one of my number one classroom management strategies. It’s a behavioral pedagogy that comes from the heart. I walk in every day unafraid to be a goober. I was never the cool one as a teenager. At four-foot-ten, pudgy, having moved from across the state in the eighth grade, I never had the luxury of flying under the radar. So, when I began teaching, I decided to own it. I actually love school. I get excited about books and museums. I can’t dance. At all. In fact, I knock things over and trip. A lot. So my job in room 301, from day one, is to let my students know that I’m lame, so it’s okay for them to be too—on any given day, in any given way.

In room 301, we all pledge to get better, together. We pledge to try. In the end, we share our weaknesses, fuss at ourselves, and move forward.

In room 301, we also do something else. We laugh.

Now for the part about laughter. After Thanksgiving, (after the eating), I was sitting alone at the dinner table with my father. We were having a conversation about my memories of childhood. There were things he remembered that I didn’t, and vice versa. What he thought was traumatic I only recalled as a secondhand story. When I recalled my first concrete memory, I had to remind him of the morning our cat Cricket came to live with us and which house we were in. Those differences in perspective are not surprising.

There was, though, one thing we both remembered in the exact same way. The fact that we always laughed. A lot. I’m not talking about snark. Snark is humor with a dark underbelly. There’s usually a message, an agenda there. But when someone really laughs, it’s selfless. True laughter is, as I put it in a poem once, a gut chuckle. The kind that comes from the joy of someone’s company as you inhabit the same place. The kind that comes when we make fun of ourselves and realize that the someone in front of us loves us anyway.

The kind that comes from being willing to see each other naked.

My grandfather was the king of that kind of laughter. There was something about his complete lack of defensiveness—the way he came at us arms open wide with not an ounce of armor—that gave everyone else in his presence permission to do the same. He loved the holidays the most because he had a larger audience to help on that score. He’d walk into the house with the phrase and tone we all repeat to this day.

Ho Ho Ho

I know those three words belong to Santa, but our family gave them new meaning with a different inflection—a raised eyebrow and catch of guffaw in the back of the throat that acknowledged the horror in the world, what a mess we were. But what the hell. There is still always time to celebrate. Always time to enjoy each other.

Always time to, “eat like no one is going to see you…”

You know the rest.

So Happy Holidays. Ho Ho Ho.

And let’s all try to go a little more naked.