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Recently on the Sk8J forum, there's been a nostalgia thread for people to post old photos of themselves. This prompted me to finally pull out my photo album and shoebox of photos and to start scanning them. Instead of keeping them in the shoebox in my closet, unseen by anyone for years and years, I can put them up in Flickr, or at least have them available to email or display on my computer.
This is one of the photos I scanned for the thread:
It was taken some time in the summer of 1973, making me about 3.5 years old. My parents had gone to see a Red Sox game the night before, and they brought home a couple kiddie batting helmets for me and my older sister Liz. One of my oldest memories is of finding the helmets on the couch that morning. By now it's barely more than an impression, but I do remember being surprised at the helmets and wondering where they'd come from - I don't recall if I'd been told that Mom and Dad had gone to the baseball game, but if I had then I didn't make the connection for some reason (i.e., I was three and a half).
Another one of my oldest memories also dates from that summer, although I don't have a photo to go with it: the day my dad almost drowned. My cousins had an in-ground swimming pool, and we'd go visit them a few times every summer for a cookout and swimming, always a treat. My dad never learned how to swim, and would just wade in the shallow end of the pool. Apparently on this particular visit he stepped into a deeper part of the pool without realizing he was doing so - there was a steeper slope that he hadn't noticed - and fell under, swallowing a lot of water.
What I recall - and I'm not sure how much this is real memory and how much just reconstructed - is that I was out of the pool, eating a hamburger or something, and suddenly there was a lot of fuss and alarm. I really don't have any clear memory of the accident itself or the immediate aftermath. I know that Dad was fished out of the pool and he was taken to the hospital in an ambulance, although I don't remember any of that either. What I do remember is being back at home and asking my mom about what had happened: where was Dad, what was wrong, was he going to be all right, and most importantly why did we have to leave the pool? Obviously I was too uncomprehending to be that upset, but it's only in thinking back on this that I wonder whether this event was partly responsible for my later reluctance to take swimming lessons and in particular to put my face underwater.
I feel that I ought to finish on a cheerier note, so here's an older photo of me, taken the previous autumn:
I do remember the jacket I'm wearing, although again as no more than a vague impression of really liking it - you can't quite tell, but the design on the upper left is from Winnie-the-Pooh, though I can't recall whether it's Pooh, Piglet or Tigger. The house in the background is the neighbor's, our house is behind and to the left of me. We'd actually just moved in to the house that August, either right before or right after my younger sister was born. I believe my older sister remembers the trailer home that my family first lived in, but for me that's the yard of the only childhood home I ever had.
This is one of the photos I scanned for the thread:
It was taken some time in the summer of 1973, making me about 3.5 years old. My parents had gone to see a Red Sox game the night before, and they brought home a couple kiddie batting helmets for me and my older sister Liz. One of my oldest memories is of finding the helmets on the couch that morning. By now it's barely more than an impression, but I do remember being surprised at the helmets and wondering where they'd come from - I don't recall if I'd been told that Mom and Dad had gone to the baseball game, but if I had then I didn't make the connection for some reason (i.e., I was three and a half).
Another one of my oldest memories also dates from that summer, although I don't have a photo to go with it: the day my dad almost drowned. My cousins had an in-ground swimming pool, and we'd go visit them a few times every summer for a cookout and swimming, always a treat. My dad never learned how to swim, and would just wade in the shallow end of the pool. Apparently on this particular visit he stepped into a deeper part of the pool without realizing he was doing so - there was a steeper slope that he hadn't noticed - and fell under, swallowing a lot of water.
What I recall - and I'm not sure how much this is real memory and how much just reconstructed - is that I was out of the pool, eating a hamburger or something, and suddenly there was a lot of fuss and alarm. I really don't have any clear memory of the accident itself or the immediate aftermath. I know that Dad was fished out of the pool and he was taken to the hospital in an ambulance, although I don't remember any of that either. What I do remember is being back at home and asking my mom about what had happened: where was Dad, what was wrong, was he going to be all right, and most importantly why did we have to leave the pool? Obviously I was too uncomprehending to be that upset, but it's only in thinking back on this that I wonder whether this event was partly responsible for my later reluctance to take swimming lessons and in particular to put my face underwater.
I feel that I ought to finish on a cheerier note, so here's an older photo of me, taken the previous autumn:
I do remember the jacket I'm wearing, although again as no more than a vague impression of really liking it - you can't quite tell, but the design on the upper left is from Winnie-the-Pooh, though I can't recall whether it's Pooh, Piglet or Tigger. The house in the background is the neighbor's, our house is behind and to the left of me. We'd actually just moved in to the house that August, either right before or right after my younger sister was born. I believe my older sister remembers the trailer home that my family first lived in, but for me that's the yard of the only childhood home I ever had.
