Throwback Thursday
Since apparently I am of such great interest as to inspire an entire post that will forever link Anne Hathaway and myself, I figured why not write an another post by myself about myself?
While clearing out the attic, my mom stumbled upon a rather bizarre artifact from my childhood. Apparently, I went through a very brief scrapbooking phase, resulting in a yellowed photo album with about 13 random pictures from my 7th and 8th grade years. Also, there was a postcard of Gary Carter, which I labeled as “Greatest Catcher in Mets HISTORY”. Naturally, my mom presented this to my wife during a recent visit and much ridicule has abounded.
Among the photos was this gem, a class picture from my 7th grade homeroom. Bonus points to whomever correctly identifies a young Kazzy first.
What skeletons are hiding in your closet… or mom’s attic?
From row, glassesReport
@tod-kelly nailed it. First guest.
Good god, the 90’s were weird.Report
Well, I have the unfair advantage of knowing what you look like as an adult.Report
That might be the most offensive thing anyone has ever said to me on this site. You connected my current appearance with my 12-year-old appearance? Ugh…Report
Heh, I had that same haircut. Either we had the same mom, or our moms each bought the same bowl at Montgomery Wards.Report
Bowl? No way, man. We were posh. That shit was done professionally. At a fancy lady salon.Report
So they used a gilded bowl? Or did they just wrap some velcro around your head and cut below the line?
Sorry, but seeing that haircut takes me waaayyy back. Why did the adults in our lives allow such atrocities to happen to us?Report
No bowl, man. These ladies were artisans. They had crafted that line.
And as bad as it was, I don’t know that it was any worse than the old-man comb over I gave myself a year or two later to look older.Report
@michael-drew
Hot damn, man! You nailed it! The kid in the top right and I were pretty good friends… but he was “the cool kid” and worked pretty hard to be that and the act got tired, largely fitting the description you offered. The other kid in my row was a comic book kid and, last I heard, the other white guy in the top row had go to the CIA to become a chef.
It is worth noting that the child in my avatar is a stock image and is of no relation to me. But, aside from his curly hair, there are some definite similarities (which I hadn’t really noticed until now). He’s much cuter than I ever was or will be.Report
Intuition, baby.
Fascinating that that’s a stock photo. I thought he was yours for sure.
Before my latest less-than-voluntary stint in the restaurant biz, I would have been truly puzzled by “had gone to the CIA to become a chef.” But now I’m like, Oh.Report
Last row, second from right in the blue shirt.Report
Front row, not female, not glasses, not Sikh.Report
You could have just said the kid in the oversized shirt. 🙂Report
So long as you know my race and gender, you had a one in four chance.
“The white guy!”
“Which one?”
“Ummm… the stupid looking one.”
“Which one???”Report
Except that’s everyone, since it’s a pic of a bunch of people just before their final growth spurt. In the first Clinton term.Report
First guess is same as New Dealer’s (back row, blue shirt, right side); second guess is kid with white shirt in front row.Report
Front row plaid.
Comment: if you’re front row in the light-blue button-up short-sleeve job then you should give your mom some crap right back cuz what the hell is up with that huge shirt? That’s ridiculous.Report
Oversized shirts were common then.Report
I remember, but… man.Report
FTR, I didn’t really pay attention to whom Tod had picked (didn’t notice who did or didn’t have glasses; don’t remember if I even looked at the picture after reading Tod’s guess…) so… I, too, …nailed it. I was about 80% sure I as right, too.Report
Oh, I figured as much. I doubted you knew that Tod had met me. Hell, I forgot.
I’m curious… what made you pick that particular weird little bugger?Report
I knew you were probably somewhat athletic at that age, so I thought you were probably not the other guy in your row (sorry dude). And that guy on top in the blue kind of looks like a little sh*t, and I was fairly sure you were a sweet little kid. And then I reasoned from your kid’s visage in your profile pic that it was semi-likely that you had blond hair and bad eyes as a kid, so that matched up. (I guess I did consider the glasses but by that point I wasn’t thinking at all about who Tod picked. It was down to the guy JH & ND picked and you for me, and again, mainly you just look like a kid with your sunny demeanor in that pic, whereas the guy in blue looks like he probably went on to spend time writing ugly things about specific girls on the stall doors in a few years and so forth. And we all know you would never, ever, ever do anything like that, ever.)Report
[…Yikes. That either got some laughs, or else people have reasonably decided I am a grade-A asshole myself. …Which, yes, reasonable. I’m sure dude is a lovely person.]Report
Argh… see my response above. I fished up the threading.Report
I do.Report
I sort of guessed correctly, but I have the same advantage that Tod does. But I will say even with that advantage, it was tough, so the middle school you doesn’t look so much like the grownup you.
After my last trip to Tennessee, I brought home some photos taken during my senior year in high school. I showed them to my girlfriend, who has known me for going on 15 years mind you, and she actually did a double take. I mean, physically. Apparently I was a little more country back then than she had expected from her knowledge of adult me.Report
Zazzy insists she would have had a huge crush on 12-year-old me. That makes me want to not have a crush on 30-year-old her.Report
Haha… it’s probably the haircut. Or the large (relative to your head) glasses, both of which were, I imagine, irresistible to middle school girls.
R was quite clear that if she had known me at the time of those photos, she wouldn’t know me now. I think she had a brief moment during which she thought that the fact that the me in those photos ever existed meant she no longer wants to know me now.Report
I think she had a brief moment during which she thought that the fact that the me in those photos ever existed meant she no longer wants to know me now.
This is a very real danger in not a few instances.Report
In my defense, I was pretty un-country for where I was from. I mean, I didn’t have a large pickup truck with a hole in the muffler for cruising around the town square blaring Garth Brooks on Friday night. If I was downtown on a Friday night, it was to see Rocky Horror.Report
FWIW, it is pictures like this and their representation of the broader environment I went to school in (this picture is more or less representative of the school system as a whole at that time) that led me and my college roommates to have very different perception on how diverse our school was.
“There is a black guy on our floor! HOW DIVERSE!”
“Um… yea.. A black guy. This place is white as shit.”
Even my wife was surprised to see it. I think for our generation, there was a certain “street cred” people sought to earn by talking about how diverse their high school was. So everyone said that. Some of us were probably slightly more accurate than others. Which doesn’t make me or my high school better than anyone else, mind you. Just that I really tended to mean it when I said it.Report
This place is white as shit.
You might need to see a doctor.Report
Or change your diet.Report
How do you feel about your favorite NFL team re-signing your favorite racist?Report
This is only marginally related to the original topic but my mom recently gave me a wooden box about the size of a shoebox. She knows I love family history and this was how she presented it: “Your great-grandmother lived for nearly 90 years and when she died most of her life fit into this box”
It was almost all paperwork, mostly kind of boring but I was overwhelmed by how much time was spent dealing with Medicare and Social Security and paying for nursing homes. It makes me want to triple my 401K contributions. There were a few gems though. Letters written back and forth between her and her sons during WWII. Funeral cards from when her husband died in the 1930s. My great uncle’s birth certificate from 1932. A gas ration book. The certificate of purchase for her gravesite. It’s been fun to dig through.Report
Also, there was a postcard of Gary Carter, which I labeled as “Greatest Catcher in Mets HISTORY”. Naturally, my mom presented this to my wife during a recent visit and much ridicule has abounded.
I don’t get it. At the time he was the greatest catcher in Mets history.Report
Well, sure. But it was among a random collection of pictires from friends’ bar mitzvahs and field trips to the Poconos.Report