Taken' a trip....down memory lane

I'm not sure what it is about this year in particular, but I have been thinking a lot about my childhood days and the feelings that I had at the time. I wanted to start the pictures with youngest to oldest, but since they loaded reverse and they wont move on the page we'll just start from now instead. My oldest is getting ready to start middle school and we are in the process of picking out her electives. She is pretty nervous about the whole thing so today I pulled out all of my yearbooks and showed the kids some pictures of what their Mom looked like back then. I have no idea what challenges lie ahead for Emma as she makes the transition from the naive cocoon of elementary school to the harsh real world of middle school, but I do know one thing for sure..... It wont be like my experience at all. The things that made my life so difficult and most of the time unbearable she wont experience. My troubles actually started in the 5th grade when I got glasses. This somehow triggered the realization that I was also extremely poor and had buck teeth and therefore was ugly and not worthy of any one's friendship any longer. I still remember the event that sealed my new fate. It was at my then best friends birthday party and I had gone in a ridiculous t-shirt that my Dad had bought for me and my brothers. My parents were separated at the time because they were constantly literally trying to kill each other so I guess I decided that I didn't want to hurt my Dad's feelings by not wearing this shirt that he had made for me that said "super kid." I know, killing me would have been more humane! Anyway I had the glasses and this made my buck teeth more obvious and our water had been turned off that week so there may have been a bit of a smell as well. Without going into too much detail everyone turned on me at the party and started making fun of me and that was the last time this girl was my friend and it set the stage for my entire middle school experience. Emma on the other hand is gorgeous and has no real flaws and doesn't have a poor family and her father isn't a drunk and her parents aren't trying to kill each other so I think she is off to a pretty decent start! It still makes me nervous because kids can be so cruel and who knows what people can come up with to torment you with. Despite all of this I think I turned out pretty ok and I know she will too even though I obviously still have some residual side effects from the experience.

I had Ethan and Jordyn take turns taking pictures so I could include a picture of what I look like today at this very moment. Now brace yourself for these next pictures. I can't believe I am owning up to looking like I did. But I'm all about brutal honesty and I think it also helps make me relateable to my daughter so here goes.......

Nothing to be real embarrassed about here. This was my senior year picture taken in 1991. This was my junior year and when I got these pictures back I wanted to kill by best friend for letting me get my picture taken with my bangs that high! It's not like they were much flatter on a daily basis but this was a bit high even for me. In fact Nathan used to tease me in French class about reception that I was trying to pick up with my earrings and bangs.
Sorry about the picture quality of these, but they were taken several years ago. This one was taken in 1989 to be exact for my sophomore year. This is when I discovered that I wasn't quite as hideous looking as I was led to believe and so I got a bit of an attitude which you can see in this picture. My problem now was that I started getting attention from the boys that used to tease me and this didn't sit well with the girls so I still had no friends except for 2. My straight as an arrow best friend and my totally opposite of that friend. I really liked going between the 2 different worlds of my friends and landing somewhere in the middle back then.

This was my freshman year. I traded in the glasses for contacts and got braces. For all the problems my parents had it killed them to discover that I was awkward and ugly and with little money they had managed to get me in braces to fix my buck teeth and provide me with contacts. And yes, that does say "Heatber!" The last 3 photos had my kids rolling on the floor with laughter at how large my glasses were. "Why did they have to be so big?" Is what they were wondering. They were too distracted by my glasses to notice how scary my hair looked!
This picture is just plain scary! Not much else to say than that! Seriously, not good! It just went from bad to worse! I don't know how that girl got out of bed every day! Seriously! I really can't believe I'm going to leave it there.
This one was the 7th grade in 1986. For the record I did my own hair and I really did think it was a pretty awesome do and I was also pretty stoked about my dangly earrings! this hair reminds me of my first love/crush/obsession, Andy Gibb, with that dreamy feathered hair of his.

This is my 6th grade picture and I was looking through my yearbook and there were a whole 8 of us that had glasses that year. I at least had 1 friend who wrote "sweet" on my picture. Either that or it was pitifully myself who wrote it! Actually several pictures have writing on them that cracked me up. We were already calling kids "stoners" in the 6th grade! Everyone was so cute except for me! While looking through the yearbook I found out that a fairly large amount of these kids went to school with me for all those years and ended up in my graduating class. Oblivious! I guess I was living in a bubble or I'm surviving on very few brain cells, either is pretty plausible.

So there you have it. The good, bad and the just plain ugly! Always remember, whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger even though at times your pretty sure your barely alive!