A Moment of Twelvefulness (With a Hint of Thirteenitude)

The first night at the beach house a couple of the older girls expressed some distaste at the sight of their parents plopping naked into the hot tub with them. This was definitely a half-hearted version of the true mortification parents can inspire if they are spotted -- even fully clothed -- in the hall at school, say. Here in the obscurity of the Moclips beach house, even the freshly-minted teenager seemed to be phoning in the eye-rolling, and the parents in question were neither perturbed nor deterred from their hippie hottubbing habits.

But the next night at dinner the topic came up again, as we were discussing a group post-prandial soak. "Only if you wear suits!" the girls jeered (or words to that effect). "No way!" said the parents (again, paraphrasing.) "Well," they mock-pleaded, "Can we at least get fifteen minutes to ourselves before you come down with no clothes on?"

"What's that?" said one 'rent, "You want fifteen minutes of us with no clothes on?"

"Noooooooo!" they squealed.

"Ooh, fifteen minutes with no clothes on?" said another. "How about right now?"

Ten seconds later all the adults had stripped off their clothes and sat calmly eating chocolate cake in their birthday suits. The children resumed eating theirs too, in a stunned silence that eventually gave way to giggles. We gave them a good half hour alone in the tub before we joined them -- yes, naked. They managed to keep the eye-rolling to a minimum.