Nostalgia trip (i.e. your most embarrassing photographic moments)

[Charlene5]

Yes indeed I am still here and I have for your viewing pleasure not one but TWO historically significant pictures of me  :wow:

The first one:



This is me in Memphis.  I'd just turned two and yes my underwear does look peculiar but I'm getting to that.   My dad was raised by his grandmother and his aunts (all 8 of them) in Memphis and I suppose he wanted to take his little family to meet the folks.  I have vague memories of our brand new 1952 Buick.  I rode the whole 1,000 or so miles from upstate New York either sitting on my mother's lap in the front seat or standing on the drive-train hump in the middle of the back seat while my brother and sister punched, pinched and tormented each other behind me.  Waddaya mean, car seat?  There weren't any seat belts no less a car seat for a toddler.  If you were in an accident you were expected to pitch head-first through the windscreen and end up a bloody mess.  It was just the way things were  :)  Anyhow, I digress.

My mother thought it would be a grand idea to potty train me before the trip to do away with the hassle of carrying around dirty diapers (no disposables in those days) and having to wash them.  She thought that she'd made a wonderful success of it until we got to Memphis when I became instantly un-potty trained.  I peed my way through all of my new big girl pants and in the picture I am wearing a very much too big pair (tied in a knot in the back to keep them up) of my older cousin.  No one could figure out what was wrong and I didn't yet have the vocabulary to explain.  Aunt Irene had one of those old fashioned high tank toilets with a chain.  I had never seen a toilet like that and it frightened me.  I was sure it was going to sweep me along and down the drain.  The only expedient thing was to pee my pants to aviod bobbing along in the Memphis sewer system.

And the second epic photo:



It is indeed my senior prom.  Fallbrook Union High School May of 1968.  (I just went to my 40th reunion and it was amazing.)  EVERYONE - well all the girls anyhow - were getting their hair put up and I was determined to do it too.  The only problem was that my hair was (and is) baby fine and the hairdresser almost had the vapours trying to get it arranged.  She finally gave up and I had it half up and half down.  The part that is up had about 50 hair pins and had been sprayed with not hairspray but LACQUER to get it to stay.  It could have been used as a backstop for a basketball hoop.  It wouldn't have moved in a hurricane.  It took me two days to pry all the hairpins out and endless washing with Joy (a dishwashing liquid) to get all the chemicals out.  Nonetheless I was quite fashionable for that one night.  Don't ask me what possessed me to make a pink dress.  Don't you love the gloves?  8) 8)

Cheers,
MJ

[Mhayes]

MJ, it's about time you came out of hibernation. It was well worth the wait!  ;D I was a little afraid that your 1st photo might have some special meaning for us.

[schen]

MJ, I can't believe you still remember the potty training days!  I thought no one can.  Now I know it is just me.   :mad:

Love the pink.  :loveit:

[Mhayes]

Shujen, the reason MJ remembers so well is that she was not fully trained until the age of 10! I think I will run for cover now. 

Margie

[hoodman3]

Hey guys,

Here are a couple of doozies. One of me at +- 2 (I'm on the left) and at 18 leaving for the senior prom. Both were in Shreveport, La.


LOL

Pete

[Tess (Tassie D)]

The part that is up had about 50 hair pins and had been sprayed with not hairspray but LACQUER to get it to stay.  It could have been used as a backstop for a basketball hoop.  It wouldn't have moved in a hurricane.

:funny: That is so funny MJ. I remember my Mum doing that to my hair at age 11. Your prom photo is very beautiful.

One of me at +- 2 (I'm on the left)

Is that left in the photo or left as we look at it?  ;D So you're the bare chested one wearing the icecream? Very cute sideburns Pete.  >:D

[glennab]

Hi MJ

Where in the world have you been?  I've missed your grand sense of humor, so appreciate not only the great photos, but your hilarious description of each.  Interesting, your comment about the pink dress and gloves.  If you note in my prom photo, I'm wearing pink and similar gloves.  I NEVER wore pink, but loved the style of the dress.  I don't remember the gloves.  Can't even imagine what that was about!  I hated dressing up.

And Pete, you look as if you were a real imp in your very young days. You wore the ice cream well!  Great shot!  You certainly "cleaned up" nicely when you got older.  Love the pre-prom photo.

Cheers!

GK

[glennab]

Okay, this is one of my few "glamour puss" photos.  I was 21, living in Madagascar, and as you can tell, I really LOVED dressing up.  This was for a big company party at the embassy.  I had the dress tailor-made by a Malagasy woman who charged me a whopping $7 for material and dress.  Living there was so interesting.  My cat ate zebu (Madagascar cow, basically) filet every day rather than cat food, because the filet was less expensive!

Next photo will be the "real" me, if a bit younger than I am now.  And I found a baby photo that my mother told me was in the photographer's studio window for years, because he loved it so much. Stay tuned.  Keep up with me, guys!



GK

[Tess (Tassie D)]

Wow, very sultry look there Glenna. Wouldn't it be nice if we could all stay looking so young.

[glennab]

Tess, I'd love to be that young again, but not that stupid!  I was a baby.  If I could take my wisdom back with me, now that'd be another story.

It amazes me how much I've changed in 40 years.  Partly age and weight and partly because I've had surgery on my jaw twice that has distorted my face a bit.  But I pretty much like who I am now, and since I'm lucky enough to be married to a guy who thinks I'm gorgeous ("moi?  are you blind?  I wuv you so much!")

I think I'll be content and just enjoy looking back on the different stages of my interesting life.  And I so love seeing all of you in your earlier days.  (I hadn't commented on this before, but my goodness you and that precious daughter of yours so resemble each other.  Isn't that awesome?)

Hugs

G

[glennab]

Old sailors never die.  They just get a little dinghy!  GK

[Charlene5]

MJ, I can't believe you still remember the potty training days!  I thought no one can.  Now I know it is just me.   :mad:

Love the pink.  :loveit:

Shujen I have one of my Cracked Science theories of why I remember back that far.  When I was a little girl I used to regularly drag out and old gladstone bag full of our family pictures.  Until a couple of years ago I thought my Dad was an orphan with no siblings and my mother had no family because that's what I was told. What was under my roof was all the "close" family I had and I wanted to hang onto those memories.   I'd go through the pictures and remember where and when they were taken.  When I started looking at pictures I was probably 4 or 5 years old so they weren't old memories.  They were still fresh in my mind.  I think that repeatedly bringing up the memories over the years kept them alive for me.  A couple of really vivid memories don't have attached pictures but they were so traumatic that they stayed with me:  The time I fell, butt first, into the toilet, and the time it snowed way early in upstate New York and we'd yet to make our annual trek downtown for new snowsuits and boots.  I begged to go outside and I was duly togged out in my brother's snow suit from two years before and his old boots, both of which were huge on me.  The boots had newspaper stuffed in the toes and I kind of had to shuffle to keep them on.  I got out the back door, did a couple of shuffles on the high stoop, slid on the ice and went flying into what seemed to me a gigantic, huge snow drift of epic proportions and disappeared from sight.  Both memories have a soundtrack - my brother braying with laughter while I screamed in terror :) 

MJ