Blast from the past

I’ve been packing away old pictures, reorganizing new pictures, and cleaning out the photos on my hard drive the past few weeks. And, since I’m spending all sorts of quality time with my teenage mementoes, I thought I’d share with my fans a “Five Things You Don’t Know About Me – Now With Embarrassing Pictures!” which, due to my coke-bottle glasses during the 90s and my veritable minefield of unflattering photos, really turned into Four Things You Don’t Know About Me.

And so, I present to you the following:

1. When I was in kindergarten, I told my teacher I was Jewish because I felt badly for that religion since no one in our class was Jewish. On a side note, doesn’t my brother look dashing in his homemade superman costume. If I remember correctly, he wore that costume for days before and after Halloween, but refused to go out trick-or-treating on the big night. Ah, to be three.

2. I had an ugly phases that started here, in 1990, and lasted until 1994.

In case you were curious, I was “pretending” to push my brother down the volcano (I believe we were in Hawai’i) for this photo op. Looks pretty realistic, eh?

3. Oh, you thought I was kidding about the ugly phase?

Look at those glasses. Look at that metal mouth, I mean teeth. Also, please note my shirt. It really doesn’t get much better than this.

4. When I was 15, my best friend and I didn’t have dates to the homecoming dance. So instead, we went on a date ourselves - dinner and a movie. I even remember the movie, Now & Then. I loved that movie. But, we were supposed to bring flowers for our date, and I MADE them. That’s right. I made a corsage out of paper. I was pretty crafty those days.

But, I think my favorite part of this picture is Kristine’s vest. That is awesome.

5. The following year, we were in a fashion show and these were the outfits we got to wear. Look! Look at those outfits. Look at the rolled up coat sleeves. Look how I’m rolling my eyes at having my picture taken because I’m too cool to be wearing a dress out of Working Girl.

And, one more bonus picture. It’s not all that embarrassing, but I like it. You can’t tell, but that is the dashing superman from the first picture hidden behind the mask and goggles. And, my cousin is holding on to me as I was about to go backwards down the slope. Because I’m that graceful on skies.