Freedom

Important dead people were buried in the floors of Enland's churches for centuries. It’s a terrifically smart idea to bury people inside a church because when you visit someone’s grave and it's rainy you don’t have to stand outside and feel even more depressed than you would normally when visiting a grave because also you’re wet.

I once stood on John Locke’s grave inside a church at Oxford. He was the philosopher who said that mankind possesses inalienable rights including life, liberty and the pursuit of property. Many people believe that these three items are the basis for modern freedom. I was deeply moved to stand on John Locke’s grave at Oxford, and since freedom is really important I would have bought a t-shirt, but none were for sale.

Once when we were teenagers, my friend Alan conducted a freedom experiment. He came up with this experiment one day after showering. It was his idea that freedom actually meant nothing touching you – no clothes, not even the ground. Purely on a whim, he jumped up in the in the bathroom after towelling off. Because of the exhilaration of the first jump he even took off the puka shell necklace that he never took off because he said girls liked it. With absolutely nothing touching him Alan jumped up again and again that morning and he called the feeling ‘real freedom.’

I thought that this was a cool idea when Alan told me about when we were teenagers. But he never told me why he quit with his freedom experiment. Recently we were having drinks and hot wings, and Alan said that he liked the feeling of real freedom so much that he began wondering how he could remain aloft naked longer.

One morning after showering he went into his room in a towel, climbed up on top of his dresser and planned to jump from his dresser to his bed. This was a pretty good jump and he would most certainly be in the air longer than simply jumping up in the bathroom. Just as he leapt, Alan said, his mother came into his room without knocking to make sure he was getting ready for school. Naked in midair he scrunched up into a ball to cover himself in front of his mother. When he landed on his bed, his “jewels” as Alan always calls them, were between his legs and the force of the landing on his side caused his legs to smack together. Alan said that his landing hurt him so much that he immediately barfed.

Alan went on to say that he felt weird around his mom for a long time, especially since she even helped him clean up the barf. She wasn’t mad or anything. But it was hard to explain to her what he doing, Alan said.