The Naked Guy Post

I promised my fellow Meals-on-Wheeler that I would write a blog post about The Naked Guy.

The Naked Guy is one of the stops on the Meals on Wheels route that my company volunteers for. We run our route on Fridays. We have a handful of volunteers in the office that are signed up for this, and we rotate among ourselves, in pairs. I end up running the route usually every 5 or 6 weeks or so.

Yesterday was one of those days. Erin and I were signed up to run the route together.

We had run the route together sometime in October as well.

That run in October was when I got to experience The Naked Guy firsthand.

Certainly, I'd dropped his food off before. He's always odd, but had heretofore been fully clothed when I knocked on his door. I'd heard of his propensity to be naked, but not ever experienced it.

Let me try to paint this picture for you.

Firstly, you need to know that we usually place the food (which consists of a hot meal, a sack lunch-type meal, and two little cartons of milk) inside a plastic Wal-Mart or similar bag. Otherwise it can get a little cumbersome to make the transfer, particularly when many of the recipients are using canes, walkers, wheelchairs, etc.

On this fateful day in October, Erin and I had no plastic bags.

There's usually some in our office that we grab before we head out. There were none.

We stop at the headquarters to pick up the food, and they may well have had some bags there. But we forgot to check.

So we're on the route, with no plastic bags. It wasn't the end of the world, by any means, a tad more difficult maybe, but we made do.

We were nearing the end of our stops, when we made it to the apartment complex where TNG lives.

In this apartment complex, we have two stops fairly close to each other, in two buildings about 50 yards apart. We normally split up the drop-offs, one of us takes TNG, the other one takes Erma, the elderly lady on the bottom floor.

I headed over to TNG's apartment building.

TNG is an older African-American gentleman that lives on the second floor of his apartment building.

I made my way up the stairs, and knocked on TNG's door.

"Coming!!!"


Moments later, the door cracks open, and TNG peeks his head around the door.

I realize that he probably is, in fact, naked; thus the reason for positioning himself so oddly behind the open door.

I say, "Meals on Wheels," and start to hand him the food.

He responds, "tee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee!"


I can't describe his reaction in any other way except that it sounded like a nervous pre-teen girl tittering about some guy she's got a crush on.

I keep handing him the food, one piece at a time. I just want to get out of there so I don't risk seeing too much of him in all his naked glory.

"Tee hee hee hee hee hee!"


He just continues giggling. I'm not sure how to deal with that.

Finally he says, "You don't have any bags today?"


I respond, "Nope, we ran out of bags. Sorry!"

"I have some bags in here; I'll go get some for you."


I did NOT want to wait around for some type of plastic bag exchange with The Naked Guy. I laughed nervously and said, "Oh, no, don't worry about it, we're just about done anyway...."

"Tee hee hee hee hee hee hee hee hee!"


It seemed to be taking forever to make this hand-off, mostly because I could only hand him one piece at a time, and he could only accept the items one-handed because his other hand was strategically holding the door in place, and then he had to twist around behind him to put each item down as I handed it to him.

Finally, the food had been transferred.

I stammered, "Have a nice day!" and bolted out of there.

I could hear him giggling behind me.

I ran for the safety of Erin's car, got in, slammed the door, and regaled her with the details of my TNG experience.


Fast forward to yesterday, when Erin and I were assigned to run the route together again.

My first words to her as we started the route were,

"It's your turn to do The Naked Guy stop."

When we made it to that point in our route, I dropped off Erma's food, and was waiting in Erin's car for her to finish up her TNG experience.

I see her darting down the stairs as fast as her boots could carry her, she hopped into the drivers seat, and we sped away.

Laughing, she regaled her story. She had knocked on the door, and TNG had yelled, "COME IN!" She hollered out, "Meals on Wheels!" and he had yelled again for her to come in.

Not wanting to know what on earth might be awaiting her if she had cracked that door open, she instead left the food outside the door and ran away.

She asked me, "Would YOU have gone in?"


Not a chance. I'll make sure TNG gets his food, but THAT, my friends, is where my obligation ceases.