Being five years old is a wonderful age. You are young enough to be totally uninhibited and old enough to have gained a certain amount of responsibility. My best friend Trudy and I imagined ourselves to be twins. We were, of course, the same age; we both had dark blond curly hair and we were in the same kindergarten class. No only that, we lived less than a block from each other. We must be twins. And because of our obvious close relationship, we tried to dress alike whenever we could. We would plan our wardrobe on a daily basis and if a new clothing purchase was needed for either of us, we begged our mothers for matching clothes.
Because we lived close together and we had older sisters the same age, our families, although not close friends, would get together occasionally for outings in the summertime. One Saturday, we planned a trip to Rooster Rock Beach along the Columbia River east of Portland, Oregon. Nowadays, Rooster Rock is a "nude" beach reserved for those who enjoy their outings "au natural." In the 1950s, however, the very idea of nudity was shocking and decent girls didn't even wear two-piece swim suits. Our older sisters wore modest cotton-knit suits for our outings and Trudy and I had the ever-popular calico bubble-suits . . . matching ones, of course.
We loved the freedom of being "on our own" and headed off down the beach with our pails and shovels. Neither of us could actually swim and we wouldn't dare do more than get wet to our knees without our parents with us. It probably wasn't that we were so well behaved, more likely it was because we were afraid. Trudy, in fact, was somewhat timid and had a nice stabilizing influence on me. She was afraid of everything, which normally kept me in line and out of trouble.
The sun was shining and happy picnickers were spread out on blankets all along the shore. We dug holes and built sand castles and went in search of jewels. Our wonderful imaginations kept us hiding out from the "witch," a game we often played on the school yard at recess time. We found beautiful rocks that were obviously "jewels" and just needed to be cracked out of their dirty shells. We washed and sorted and carefully stored the best ones in our buckets along with other treasures scavenged from the beach: bottle caps, a pair of sun glasses missing only one temple piece and a plastic cup left behind by some careless person.
As Trudy glanced up toward the access path from the parking lot, she seemed to be struck dumb. I turned and also froze. Walking along the path was a young woman carrying a beach towel. She didn't, at first glance, appear to be wearing anything! On closer scrutiny, we decided that she was indeed wearing something but we couldn't decide what it was. Breaking free of our reverie, we raced back to our parents who were sunbathing on their blankets, cold beers from our coolers in their hands.
"Look, look!" we cried, pointing at the girl and jumping up and down in our excitement. All four parents turned to see the object of our small, insistent fingers. Our mothers gasped and our fathers laughed.
"What is she wearing?" we demanded in our shrill, five-year-old voices.
"It's called a string bikini," Trudy's mom stated in obvious disapproval.
"Girls," my mom admonished, "be quiet and stop pointing. It's rude." She turned twinkling eyes to my dad who was still chuckling.
"We want to go see!" I insisted, "It looks like some kind of animal skin."
"Don't be ridiculous," Mom's voice held a no-nonsense tone, "it isn't decent and you are not going to go look."
"Absolutely not!" Trudy's mom added. "The very idea of her coming here in that suit. This is a decent, family beach." Cold indignation was creeping over our blankets.
"You know," my dad drawled in his wonderful Southern accent, "she must want someone to look at her or she wouldn't have come in that thing. I think the girls should definitely go look if they want to. I mean, you wouldn't want to hurt that young woman's feelings by not having anyone notice, would you?" All four of our parents exchanged glances and some unspoken communication passed between them while Trudy and I hopped up and down in our impatience to gain permission.
"OK," Trudy's dad finally agreed, "go look." The other three parents nodded their consent.
We could hardly believe our luck; they had actually agreed to let us go look at an (almost) naked woman! We had never seen a naked woman before. We turned and gleefully headed in her direction. She was now sun bathing on her beach towel. She was laying flat on her back and had on sunglasses, further shading her eyes with one hand. When we got to the foot of her towel, we could see that her suit consisted of three minuscule triangles of leopard-print fabric held together by skinny, black "shoelaces." We held hands and gaped in unmasked awe. We could actually see her belly button and most of her chest. In fact there was almost nothing we couldn't see.
"Do you think she gets cold?" Trudy whispered to me, not really expecting an answer.
"I don't know," I responded, "I wonder what the back looks like?"
At the sound of our whispering, the girl removed her dark glasses stared straight at us. We weren't moving from the foot of that towel, though; we had our dads' permission. She squirmed. We dug in our heels and held our ground. It was a stand-off. After about ten minutes, she realized that we had no intention of going away and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it. She probably also concluded that two five-year-old little girls planted firmly at the edge of her towel were not only blocking the sun but also everyone else's view. Appearantly she was not totally stupid, for she seemed to perceive that she would not meet any young men while so closely scrutinized by two skinny little kids. She picked up her towel, wrapped it around her waist sarong-style and headed back to the parking lot. Trudy and I watched until she was out of sight before slowly returning to our parents.
"Well, shoot," I said, dragging my toe in the sand.
"You girls back so soon?" Trudy's dad asked, "What happened to your friend?"
"She must of got cold," Trudy replied knowingly, "or maybe she gotted a sunburn acause she wented home."
"What's wrong with you, Little Miss Long Face?" my dad wondered, peering up into my dark expression.
"It's not fair," I answered petulantly, tracing more circles with my toe, "I never got to see what the back looked like."
