Holy mackerel! Get a load of those memories!

I think that most people look at old photos of themselves and say "Wow, those were good days. what a cute little kid I was. I wish I could bring those times back." Well, I won't argue that I had some good times as a child and I do miss a good portion of my kid-hood. But WOW!! There is no reason in salty Hell that I would want to revert to what I looked like back then. Well, I should say that I would make a large effort to not look like such a hare-brained doof when having pictures taken of me. Because I don't think I was an ugly child by nature, but if I had a severe case of amnesia brought on by a pillowcase full of cashew nuts striking me sharply in the temple, and the only tool I had to recover memories from my childhood were old school photos and the like... well, I'll just say that I would do everything in my power to make sure that my memory loss remained in tact. And that would most likely include keeping heavy, head-thumping objects close by at all times.

The most embarrassing photographic example I can recall is my first grade school picture. When you first look at it, the shiny, red chunkiness of my face is astonishing and unavoidable. It overwhelms your senses. Truly, if I showed you the original, your breath would come in short gasps and you would race for the nearest reflective surface just to make sure your face didn't somehow become infected by the severe rosiness you witnessed in the picture. I look like a pile of ripe tomatoes with a matted mound of brown hair on top, and the smile I am wearing could only be described as daffy. The bold, solid colored 49'ers t-shirt was also a gross miscalculation on my part. At the time I thought it was cool, but it only served to make me appear more "red". The only thing that doesn't appear red is the one gray tooth I had at the time.

Then, there are a handful of elementary era photographs featuring the styling error known as the bowl cut. I'm not sure how it came to be that a large, concave piece of picnic ware paired itself with scissors and found its way to the top of someone's head, but maybe that information is best left wherever it's buried.

Now, adding itself to a good number of these memories is the past belief that bearing one's teeth, squinting one's eyes and grinning like an idiot is always hilarious... nothing could be further from the truth. There are a couple pieces of photographic evidence displaying this, yes, but mainly I am remembering a particular home video where I did just that, and if memory serves me, I had shamed myself even further by grabbing a small set of deer antlers (antlers that my dad was preparing to mount on the wall but were now still attached to the top of the deer's skull) and holding them on top of my head as I... umm, I don't know... pretended I was a happy, retarded whitetail, I guess. Hmm, come to think of it, I'm pretty sure I was bowl-cutted at that time too.

I can only praise the boundless mercy of the Gods that none of these atrocities was accompanied by Zubaz. I dodged that bullet; though I suppose cannon ball would be a more appropriate choice of words. Yes, because like cannons, Zubaz put me in mind of things that are clumsy and dangerous. My mom attempted to coax me into getting a pair, and though potentially harmful to my emotional development, she had good intentions. So, thanks for not pressing too hard, Mom. You let me learn from my mountains of other mistakes without forcing me into ugly pants :)