Photo Friday: Yours Truly Edition

Good morning!

Well, we made it to Friday again, and I'm pumped! My sister and I are going to try to catch an afternoon showing of Gatsby, Anna's in town and ready to go do karaoke, it's a flea market weekend, AND my future mother-in-law Deb is having a little lunch for me tomorrow to celebrate my GRADUATION OMFG IT'S OFFICIAL, I HAVE A MASTER'S. Call me, people-with-better-paying-jobs-open. Call me!

For Photo Friday this week, I thought I might take a break from scrutinizing other members of my family tree, and turn the spotlight on myself for once. People, in all my glory-- 1980's me.

Cue Jay-Z's "The Takeover" here...rockafella y'all...

My sweet dad has undertaken the mammoth project of digitally scanning, a few by a couple, the thousands upon thousands of photos in our own collection as well as those of my grandma. I was born in 1985, so I think some of my best photos are probably circa 1988 or 1989, and boy, do they feature me-me-ME. As the first born, I was the subject of many the impromptu photo session. In the above tableau, you can see me in media res, standing on the chair of the Fisher Price table-and-chairs set in my bedroom, doing who knows what. On the table, there's a Fisher Price grocery cash register that was one of my favorite toys because it includes, among its features, a motorized belts for moving the tiny groceries along to be scanned, and a scanner, which bleeped and blooped more or less successfully, depending on how the batteries were doing. In the background, a Radio-Flyer wagon full of stuffed animals-- poor Kermit has been plucked from the bunch, as he was easily my favorite, and is being held upside down as I demonstrate whatever it is I'm demonstrating here. What an outfit, by the way! Mickey Mouse leotard from the Sears catalog? Check. Coordinating tights and turtleneck? Check. I love how my face has changed precious little since I was a little gal.

Here I am in front of a tree in the front yard of the house I still live in! One of the weirdest feelings when I'm going through a lot of these is pointing out to Matthew, "Hey, see? This is in the kitchen! That's in the backyard before my dad planted that pine tree! That's me on the front step!" of the house in say 1986, while we're IN said house in 2013. Spooky. I loved the red Mary Janes in this photo so much that my mom, after much protestation on my part that I hadn't outgrown them, that I could still squeeze my little feet into them, sliced down the back of heel so I could continue wearing them as ad hoc clogs around the house long after they were too small. I'm still resentful of my Uma-Thurman-grade-big-feet, but it's funny to think of me as a little kid going, "NO! I CAN STILL WEAR THESE! THEY LOOK FINE!" much as I try to squeeze into size 10 shoes at the present day. Some struggles are lifelong. That puppy dog doll I'm carrying was named Sunny, and was apparently part of a tie-in to a cartoon called Fluppy Dogs (you had me at "Fluppy", Fluppy Dogs). I lost Sunny I at the K-mart on Gallatin Road by accidentally leaving it in the shopping basket,. This created a situation that should hence be known as Fluppygate '88, in which I was inconsolable in the back of our family's Monte Carlo as my dad and a Kmart service representative tried to figure out where the doll in question had ended up. Spoiled thing that I was, we ended up buying Sunny II at that same K-mart, after an APB on the missing dog had turned up nothing, but it was never the same.

One of my favorite places to go as a kid in Nashville was the Cumberland Science Center. Pre-renovation in the late 90's, this place was a bizarre hodgepodge of natural science and historic long-term exhibits (an underground animal burrow, a 1900's general store, a Japanese tea house...it was all over the place!), and a series of traveling exhibits  The best of these were always the dinosaur-themed ones, the most memorable of which included robotic, Showbiz Pizza style life-size models of the prehistoric creatures. The first dream I can ever remember having had to do with sleeping in my parents' bed, and waking up to discover that the wall behind the headboard opened up to reveal hissing smoke and fog and the robotic dinosaurs from the traveling exhibit. When I woke up in real life, I was adamant that there really was some kind of hidden panel behind the wall, and kept looking for it with both my little palms outstretched to plaster, ear flat to its surface, listening for dinosaurs like a tiny safecracker. In the above photo, I love how I'm trying to put my head inside the T-rex's maw. Nice one, kid. Good survival instincts.

Last but not least, here's me in the back of my mom's tan 1989 Nissan Sentra. What a car! If the transmission hasn't gone out on it in late high school, I would probably be driving that little piece of heaven right now. Those sunglasses were promotional items from Crest toothpaste, which my Procter and Gamble employed uncle got for me, along with a telephone shaped like the Crest mascot. Note that the sparkly blue is meant to evoke a connection between it and the consistency/color of the toothpaste, but these shades were way cooler than the product itself, obviously. I was trying to figure out if I could tell where this was by the background, but I have no idea.

So! Do you have any sweet photos of yourself being a little crazy bab back in the day? What makes your most memorable childhood photos the most memorable? Do you have any that you look back on and go "WHAT. AM I DOING. IN THIS PICTURE." ? Let us know!

Have a great weekend, and I'll see you on the other side! Til then.