Sometimes, you look at old photos of yourself from your childhood and think you look cute. But a lot of the time, especially if you lived through the 80’s, you might think you look like a dork.
For the most part, I’m sure most of my childhood photos fall into the “dork” camp.
Recently, I was asked to dig up a photo of myself from my childhood. With Halloween around the corner, clowns being on everyone’s mind and Thursday being known as a great day to share “throwback” photos, I decided to show you what I dug up. Luckily, I was little enough in the photos I found that there was still some of the cute-factor left.
Take a look at these cute, little clowns who think they’re getting candy! This was me at about 3 years old (on the right) with my big sister (left).
Clearly, this was back when clowns were still considered cute. This was before clowns were used in too many horror movies or started showing up in the woods, near playgrounds.
And it was back when you didn’t just run off to Target to buy a Disney princess costume. This was when mothers would still sew Halloween costumes for their kids at home. My mother made both of these clown costumes, as she did for a lot of my childhood Halloween ensembles.
Except the year my sister and I went as “punk rockers,” using black garbage bags as our dresses. (I still shake my head at my childhood thought process on that one.)
And this is 6-year-old me, as a little first grader. I had long, straight bangs like that throughout my whole childhood!
My youngest child is now a 6-year-old, first grader, who is also missing a front tooth, like I am in the photo.
I try to study myself in these old photos to see if I can recognize the family resemblance between my kids and myself, wondering if they look at all like me. Does my son have my eyes? My mouth? It’s hard for me to tell. Though I maintain it’s always harder for you to see the resemblance in your own kids than it is for other people to see it and point it out to you.
The reason I was digging around for an old photo was for an author friend’s new book launch. I’m a regular contributor to a blog that focuses on children’s literature. Earlier this week, we were celebrating co-contributor Ronni Arno’s book being published by sharing 80’s photos of ourselves as a tie-in with a blog post. The 6-year-old photo was the one I shared.
Whether it was the feathered hair, heavy bangs or the goofy clothes, it’s hard to look back on childhood photos and not laugh. Regardless, we survived.
And now we take our revenge by photographing our kids so they’ll have photos they can laugh at later, too.