Over the weekend my mother presented us with something that surprised, pleased, slightly embarrassed, and produced a slew of other less-definable reactions. Mothers do this sort of thing, I’m told. We have no children to whom we might have inflicted this on, so I’m unable to say what must go through a parent’s mind on such occasion.
But it’s sweet and important and after my initial “What the hell…” reaction I was really very pleased. She came out with a big file folder full of “stuff” from my grade school years. Among the items were class portraits and…well…
 Yes, this is me, circa 1965. Note the three-piece suit? I was very much into my James Bond period at this time and dressing well was part of it. Obviously I didn’t wear a suit every day—this was special—but when I did, I took Sean Connery as my model and did it up right.
Of course, I didn’t really know how to wear it. Posture was still a work-in-progress and my hair has only ever been in control one year, about two years after this when I went through my heavy Brylcreem phase, with pompadour and everything.
And of course note the smirk. I have no idea what I was thinking at the time, to produce such an expression, but doubtless it had little to do with what was going on around me. Doubtless I was trying to exude some semblance of cool, something I’ve never possessed in any measurable degree, but in my own head I certainly was.
Now here is the next year’s version—same school, mind you, Emmaus Lutheran School.
Note the sartorial change.  This would have been my Man From U.N.C.L.E. phase—that or Lost In Space—and turtlenecks were the fashion of the moment. Now this I likely would have worn most days. I had some notion then that clothes made the boy, hopefully into the version of the boy desired. Illya Kuryakin cool, someone not to mess with, in the know, capable and maybe a touch dangerous.
Yeah, right, with that face. Dangerous. Uh huh. Cute kid, isn’t he? In 1966 I would have been 11 or 12, depending on the time of year this was taken, and I don’t recall that anymore. I look at that face now and I wonder what happened to that kid. He actually looks happy. And I suppose most of the time I was fairly happy. Not in school, though, but I learned to play a part, and I was playing one there, I’m sure. The pictures were always for that, I remember, the chance to get down in the record what I thought I was and what I wanted to be. It never worked, I always ended up looking like any other hapless kid, goofily unaware, and absurdly pleased to be getting my picture taken.
But that smirk…that, I think, stayed with me. Take a look at this one from almost 30 years later.
A friend shot this for me as a promo image for the writing career I was convinced I was about to have. You can still kind of see that kid there, cocky, a little divorced from reality, and somehow knowing something the photographer or the audience doesn’t. A bit more practiced, obviously, and the freckles are gone. In a way I kind of miss the freckles. (For many years I actually found freckles erotic—I’d had a couple of girlfriends who had them in ample supply, fair-skinned and somehow the freckles just…anyway.)
Now, along with the pictures, I found in my mother’s file a couple of report cards. Mind you, this was from a parochial school, and for the most part I was unsurprised. I was a poor student. Mostly Cs and C-s. The surprising grades were in Religion, which generally were Bs and As. I tell people when it comes up that at one time I was a righteous little christian and evidently it showed in my classroom performance.
What else? There was one composite, one of those sheets with thumbnails of the whole class, and I was asked if I remembered them all. This was the 4th Grade and I did amazingly well. I think I named 80% of them. There were a few I didn’t recognize, and a couple I did but could not put names to.
There were also merit badges and such from my Boy Scout days. I didn’t do well in that, either. I had a merit badge in fire safety, marksmanship, basketweaving (yes, basketweaving—don’t ask), first aid, and a couple others, plus achievement patches from state Jamborees. I’ll tell you about those sometime—the second one I attended was cause for me quitting the scouts.
It felt more like a record of someone else’s life, to be honest. Not me. I’ve worked to distance myself from that kid in a lot of ways. He did not impress me at the time, though he hid it well. But I have to wonder how much is still in here, still influencing, still informing who I am and what people see. I mine my own past for material to build stories with and I have utilized my childhood often. I am still surprised sometimes by what I find.
