This was the worst part of our visit to W.VA. I started to tell this story at the family dinner and everybody stopped listenig. "There goes The Prude again" Maybe I can make myself more clear in writing: because, as I've said about a million times, I'm not offended by bad manners, I'm offended by callousness, nastiness and unkindness.

There was a mix of people on the scenic train ride. It was Saturday, so there were young and old and a lot of families. There was also a bus group of mostly teenage and fairly conservative Mennonites. How do I know they were fairly conservative?

Well, the headcoverings of the women and girls were a little more substantial than those you sometimes see bobbing around in Target, not one person in the group was wearing anything ready made, and, among themselves they spoke a dialect that was not immediately discernable as English. Vowels were elongated, there was a lot of "Dutch" thrown in, and their syntax was all screwed up - at least to the "English" ear. This was not a group that I, as a conservative Quaker, could get mixed up in or even remotely fit in with. ( though I did see some women close to me in age giving me some scrutiny. I think it was my bun. They might have just been trying to figure out my hair clip) These were people whose traditions and hearts told them that "in the world but not of the world" meant that the world could pretty much stay at arms length.

As the trip got under way, it became clear that this outing was one in which members of the group could "lighten up a little bit." As I said, it was mostly older teens and young adults. There were a few young marrieds and a few older people who were there in the obvious role of chaperones, and they set a relaxed tone...rolling down their stockings in the warmth of the sun, telling jokes, or at least funny stories, to cheer up the youngest members of the group some of whom were looking a little shell shocked from the "stampede" mentality of the secular crowd. Though an old married couple whom I bet could look pretty darn dour when they wanted to, followed the mixed male and female teenage crowd onto the observation car, they developed an astonishing interest in seeing the birds, the river, the railing...and doing anything BUT giving more than a cursery glance at the couples which formed up, as if by magic, in the warm sunshine.

So, this is nice, right? It's a beautiful day, we're gonna see a bald eagle, the group on the observation car was about 75% Mennonite, the rest of us "worldly", romance was in the air.... Friendly people on the river waved at us, worldly people on the train waved back.....Then some guy on the river looked up at this car load of conservative teenage girls and decided to moon us.

Now, 99.9 % of the time I don't feel that mooning is something to get excited about. I mean, there are people in the world who, apparently feel that their ass is something special ( though, amazingly, it almost never is) Hey, if you really have a huge urge to show me your rear end, and you just don't have any self control, that's fine. I can always close my eyes.

Additionally, I firmly believe that there are stuffy people in the world who can stand to be mooned. There ain't nobody who knows me well who thinks I'm into conformist behaviour. You never know, I may go out and moon somebody myself, though I haven't yet, and I am REALLY aware of the fact that, in spite of Avon's cellulite reducing cream, my ass is nothing special either.

And I know this guy was probably a little drunk...maybe he didn't have his eyeglasses on, didn't see the age of the folks on the observation car. But, I'm thinkin' more likely he didn't care...or, worse, he sort of got off on it.

He certainly didn't see what happened next, but I did. It wasn't anything dramatic. None of the Mennonite girls screamed, though some of the worldly girls did. The Mennonite girls all looked at their shoes as if they had recently appeared on their feet. About six inches of space suddenly opened up between any members of the opposite sex who were standing anywhere near each other. Almost all of the guys were beet red and a few tried to stammer something out, probably words to the effect of "I promise, I am not the same species as whatever that was we just had to look at there on the river".

I know that the Moon River dude didn't mean to suck all the romance and warm feeling out of the outing for those young people. He might even feel bad about it if he knew. Probably he just WASN'T THINKING. And you know what? This is why manners were developed: so people don't have to go around thinking all the time, " can I do this, can I do that?" I'm not this big champion of everybody following social mores and walking in lock step - I'm just saying that, generally speaking, if you're in public in American society, please consider your audience before you drop your drawers. If you're going to "deviate" a little, give some thought to the possible consequences - no, not for you but for OTHER PEOPLE.

Ok. I'm off my soap box. But I still hope the eagle we saw further down river took a dump on that guy's head. It would serve him right.