Nekked and Afraid

A fully-grown butt nekked man ran into the street in front of my minivan at 3:30 p.m. today. I’ll wait while you reread that sentence.

Nekked Man sprang from the bushes on the left side of the rural road I happened to be traveling, dashed across the black top with all the grace and enthusiasm of a baby elephant, and then halted before turning to…urm…face me.

Naturally I was alarmed. At 36 years-old, I have never seen a fully-grown nekked man in broad daylight in the Great Outdoors. I took my foot off the accelerator and scanned the left side of the road, looking for whatever may have sent Nekked Man scurrying into the street after apparently devouring only his clothing, but saw nothing. I dared a few glances at Nekked himself, trying to decipher if he was injured or bleeding, but too embarrassed to look at his face.  And that’s when things got…interesting.

It took me a second to realize that Nekked was just kind of standing there. Despite the ample overgrowth along the right side of the road, Nekked didn’t throw himself into the bushes or attempt to conceal himself in any way.  He just stood there:  tall, virtually hairless, and glowing fishbelly white in the afternoon sunshine.

Like any good Southerner, I knew what must be done when confronted with a roving nekked man during peak school bus traffic hours. At a stop sign in the fork of the road, out of sight from Nekked, I called The Law.

A friendly receptionist at my local Sheriff’s Office answered the phone. “Hello,” I said, “I need to…urm…make a report.”

“I’m sorry, m’am, but you can’t make a report over the phone, you have to come in to do that.”

Crap! Guess I should have called 911. Nekked’s junk, while impressive, hadn’t seemed to warrant an actual emergency call.

“Um, well, I only needed to let someone know that there is a fully-grown nekked man running across and along Old Sulpher Springs Road in Alexandria right this very minute.”

“Let me transfer you to Dispatch,” Ms. Friendly answered.

Dispatch had a few questions for me that I was ill prepared to answer. Specifically, they wanted to know if I could provide a description of Nekked.

“Well, not really,” I said.  “He was white, tall, adult, and well…nekked.  To be honest when I saw that he didn’t look hurt and that he wasn’t gonna try and hide his nekkedness from me, I was afraid to look directly at him.  I’m pretty sure he’s the only nekked man you’re gonna come across out there this time of day, though.”

I have done nothing the rest of this afternoon but wonder if The Law caught up with Nekked. I am most likely to live another thirty-six years without ever again encountering anyone like him. The thought fills me with both immense relief and weird disappointment. Thanks for the memories, Nekked!