Honoring the age-old comedic tradition of self-deprecation, I share with you, favorite Blogosphere participants, some of the most awful childhood photos in existence. I call this My Album of Humiliation, Volume I. (This means exactly what you think it means.)

This one is from my first birthday party. The poor picture quality makes it difficult to tell, but I think I may have been angry. The other thing that is hard to see is the full set of red, vinyl encyclopedias on the shelf in the background next to my Little Tikes replica mail box. I love having visual proof of something as delightfully late mid-century as the encyclopedia collection, purchased volume by volume from a door to door salesman.

It looks like I was about two when this one was shot. While the crease across my face was caused by the folding of the picture itself, I have no excuses for the hair cut. Or the chins. I think I was about nine when my aunt visited from Denver and shared with my mom the special technique for trimming bangs so the child did not look as if you had placed a large salad bowl over their head before weilding the scissors. Clearly, this photo was shot well before my ninth year. Based on the expression, I’m guessing I was either practicing the look of demurity or, I had no yet been totally toilet trained. While she may not have been an expert hair stylist, I’m glad my mother was vigilant when it came to thorough bathing. Otherwise, those numerous neckrolls would have enabled enough baby-skin-fold crud to build up that my head may have rotted off.

That’s me, on the far left in the vinyl Lucy from Peanuts costume. My humiliation is lessened by the fact the boy two down from me is in a vinyl R2D2 costume, and clearly has not developed his clapping skills as quickly as I had. The boy in the center was Jeremy, the boy who marked my first foray into only instance of stalking. I’d cut my teeth wooing boys the year before in three-year-olds preschool tackling Adam on the playground. Quickly realizing subtlety was the way to go, I made sure I was always within eyeshot of Jeremy. When that hadn’t worked by mid-way through the year, I resorted back to my more direct method of tackling. There was eventually an unfortunate parent conference and Jeremy and I parted ways. As of this photo, there was still hope since it was only October, and here I am again, following Jeremy down the slide.


Stalking aside, how rad is an indoor slide?


I can’t imagine what reason a superhero would have for being this angry, but perhaps all of the poolside photo taking was impeding my ability to fight crime.

These photos were from my one and only ballet recital. I danced as one of the guards in The Wizard of Oz. Don’t remember the guards from the movie? Neither did I until years later when, watching the movie, I realized they play a brief role leading the Scarecrow and the Tin Man into the Witch’s castle. They appear on screen for maybe a total of five minutes. Obviously, this recital was talent-based. Following the viewing of these photos, my career as a writer seems to make even more sense.


This photo was from sometime in the mid-80’s, when my rather distant cousin on my mother’s side asked me to be a junior bridesmaid in her wedding. Somewhere in the world, when those two other girls look back at their family photos, they probably wonder why the creepy brunette girl ruined their photo gazing psychotically at the photographer by Mary’s wedding cake.