All my life I’ve been naïve. And once, a naive boytoy.

How naïve?

In middle school, the girls were to take a posture test, and had to strip down to their panties in the gym. The boys were ordered to a designated room while this was going on, but I was daydreaming and didn’t hear the announcement.

I showed up at the gym as usual.

You never saw fifty topless girls run so fast.

My being in the wrong place was announced over the school intercom, and the kids went wild with laughter.

I briefly became the hero of the school.

When my wife first met me, she said it was like she was meeting a jungle boy. In other words, she had to teach me how to use toilet paper.

That’s naïve.

Being naïve isn’t being stupid exactly. It’s more like being innocent of the cynical scheming machinations of the world at large, and having a rather simplistic, unfettered view of it.

For example, until fairly recently, I used to believe that if you wanted to enroll in college, you went to the college closest to your house. If you lived near Harvard, you went there. If you lived near Pixie Junior College with an enrollment of seven, you went there. If you lived a block from Oxford in England, you went there.

For those of you who are naïve, college entrance is based on grades and money, not location.

I still believe government should be honest, while half the people in the country (proved in the last election) feel honesty is trite and out of date.

However, I take comfort that some of the greatest people in history, like Don Quixote,

were naïve. Babe Ruth couldn’t remember names and so he called everybody “kid.”

What are the pro and cons of being naïve?

When you’re naïve, you worry much less about a lot of stuff. A lot goes over your head. There is certain bliss with ignorance.

I still don’t know what Sars flu is and personally I don’t care, not because I’m cruel, but because my capacity for worry about all the problems of the world is limited. That’s a pro.

A con is that when you’re naïve, you’re the easiest person to fool and take advantage of.

Since most people aren’t as naïve as me, my being naïve can cause others consternation. Being naïve can also be dangerous ----another con.

A naive boytoy?

Before I met my wife, I was trying to sell office supplies by phone to a lawyer in Mississippi. The receptionist on the other end sounded cute, so I got on a plane and went to stay with her---sight unseen.

Who in his right mind would do something like that?

She was kind of cute.

She showed me around the Deep South, where I’d never been, then took me to meet her parents. Suddenly, she wanted to get married. I didn’t. Her relatives, Billy Bob and Ray Bob Floyd, came after me. I had sullied one of their womenfolk.

I fled to a small airport with a suitcase trailing a line of clothing. I boarded a biplane and got away to New Orleans (she later told me by long distance telephone, "you really did me dirt.")

Whew!

Thinking you could casually date someone from another culture?

That’s naïve.