Today’s NaBloPoMo Prompt: If you could pass along only one photo of yourself to future generations in your family, which would it be and why?
I picture of me as a baby, I think, because why bother with all the nonsense and silliness that constructed me, all the random ephemera, the scars and bruises that came to be my identity? Why not go with my potential? An old scratchy photo from 1971, yellowed from the passage of time, a pre-digital artifact the speaks of an era that, thankfully forgotten, nevertheless created damned fools like myself who created more damned fools.
There’s me on a velvet mat, chubby as all hell. My grin so wide it inflates my head by a factor of two. Not much hair. Cloudy blue background. What’s this little ball of fat going to do with his life? Sports? Business? Creative arts? Anarchy? Terror, doom and gloom, atrocities? So many doors to open, explore, back out of slowly, horrified, close and lock and nail boards too, weeping.
Best part of this photo is I had no idea what was going on. Didn’t know I was being photographed. Didn’t even know I existed! In every other photo you see of me, I know there’s a camera pointing at me, and I’m distorting my reality to be what I think I want to be for the picture. Disingenuous, I think, is the word for it.
Mitch Hedberg has a joke about how people show him a photo and say, this is a picture of me when I was younger, to which he replies, every picture of you is when you were younger. So no photo is accurate to NOW, so why not go ALL the way back?
Today’s NaBloPoMo Photo Prompt: Action