Time has been kind...

Over the weekend, I carved out some time to go through a couple of storage containers so that I could finally get rid of a bunch of stuff that had been long ago relegated to "pack rat" status. And even though I don't like throwing things away until they either turn to dust, or I see them listed on the Attorney General's list of potentially toxic waste products, I figured that this was a good time to divert from that normal path. Generally, I try to keep things in order, but that normally means that somewhere, there's a pile of shit that I've stowed out of sight, and out of mind.

So I pulled out the container and started diggin through it. Wow. Cool. A picture frame with some other guy in it. If I was more in touch with my feminine side, he might be attractive. Otherwise, he's just a face in a frame that I didn't put there. I'll keep the frame. Dude's gotta' go. And here's a bag of black plastic checker pieces. Why black pieces? Where are the red ones? Where's the board? Why in the hell would I want to save black checker pieces? Trash. And what do we have here??? A photo album... Okay, let's see what we have here... I opened the album and could tell it was really old. It was one of those photo albums with the clear plastic covers that got yellow and brittle over time and stuck to the pages like some type of ancient super glue after a few years of being tucked away in the far reaches of storage land. So I opened it and saw that it was a bunch of pictures of me from way back in the day. Waaaay back in the day. They were the kinds of pictures where I was too old for mom to be dressing me and therefore, not young enough to blame the fashion on her.

The first couple of pages were cute; baby pics (damn, I was cute!) and a few pre-pre-pubescent shots in which one could just look at my face and tell that the only care that I had in the world was whether the coyote was actually going to catch the roadrunner the next time it came on T.V. But then I turned the page and there it was. My picture. circa, 1978. I was standing there, as cool as cool could ever be. I'm wearing a rust-colored three-piece suit. Somewhere tucked under there was a silk, big-print shirt. I knew that because the big-ass dumbo-ears-like collar was prominantly displayed above the lapel of the vest. I was wearing platform shoes at least 3 inches tall and I must not have been quite steady on them since I was copping this wicked gansta' lean on a big speaker by the door that MUST have been because I was feeling unsteady on the big shoes because there's no WAY I thought I was that cool! And the piece de resistance; a medium-height, but neatly trimmed afro that was connected to a set of sideburns which eventually formed a perfectly positioned mustache. In the picture, I could only imagine that the crucifix that my mom fastented to the wall by the door served not only to bless the entrance to our home, but I'm sure it also had to be a conduit via which she prayed that I would grow out of this stage in my fashion life. See below? First person to laugh gets kicked out of the blog!