That’s me on the left, yellow pigtails flying. I’m singin’ and dancin’, you see. Oh, and that’s Kathy Najimy, dancing on the trunk of the car. (I cannot believe this show is not on her IMDb page.) I am 13 years old. They called me Traceypoo.
You may NOT.
Oh, peeps! Sadly, there’s even more where this came from.
I had to snap this picture — our favorite shoes, getting a break for once.
And I have finally joined the 21st century: I have a cell phone!!
And it takes pictures, see? Notice how my fingers look like Play-Doh Fun Factory sausages. Or as if they’re made of almost lifelike rubber. Creepy. Also, as you can see, I’m not very good at figuring out how to crop these things. Still, Missy tagged me a while back for a self-portrait — and I virtually never follow-through on “tags” — but, ta-da, here’s the best I could do. Maybe next I’ll get an actual camera. That’d be so 20th century of me.
We proceed. With My Beloved’s permission, because this one’s about him, not me.
Here he is, the tall, dark, and, uhm, HOT one. Keyboard player for their bitchen high school rock combo. I am not allowed to post the name of said bitchen high school rock combo. There are limits, people, to his love. Whenever I look at this picture, I gaze upon MB with a swoony high school girl’s eyes and then shudder when I realize that, had we known each other back then, we would not have known each other back then. I was a drama geek; he was a super hero of hotness, apparently. I would have been the girl just praying he’d say hi to me in the hall, busily over-analyzing any time he even blinked his eyes in my direction. And he would have been the guy who came to my show, hiding in the back row, because he had to write a report about it for English. (I just read that part to MB and got The Eye Roll.)
Oh, and during rigorous cross-examination regarding the matchy white pants, MB steadfastly claimed there were no “dude, what are you gonna wear” phone calls prior to this seriously rockin’ photo session, no deliberate snub of backwards cap guy. All righty.
But may I say that words cannot express how much the dude in front disturbs me. Please PLEASE cut your taco salad hair bowl. I cannot deal with you. You mar the experience of this photo. And stop looking at us with that look that presumes that we are all enraptured by your taco salad hair bowl.
I have to say I am in love, though, with the TOTALLY EXTREME EARNESTNESS of this bitchen rock combo. Look at them!
Doesn’t everyone have one of these? A Drawer of Embarrassing Photos? Photos languish there, unloved, unwanted, sad little memory orphans. You don’t know what to do with them. They don’t go into a book. They don’t get thrown away. They just … get visited on occasion, maybe a guilty glance here and there before the drawer is quietly slid shut again, photo faces staring up into the darkness of their shame drawer.
Well …. I opened our Drawer of Embarrassing Photos today — God knows why; I’m not thinking straight — and here’s, oh, just one of the photos I found:
Oh, Lord. I’d totally forgotten this … moment between my junior year college roommate and me. (I’m on the left.)
So here we are, on the shores of the beautiful Columbia River, with the view and the sand and the green and the driftwood, you know, basically God’s country, and, we are, uhm, having a slap fight, naturally. I have no memory of what we’re fighting about.
“I think the view is pretty!!”
“NO! I think the view is pretty!!”
I dunno. Something stupid.
I think it was a mock fight situation, actually — or at least, she thought so. Man, was she annoying. We were in the theater department together and she was never NOT posing. Singing? Posing. Acting? Posing. Breathing? Posing.
I mean, look at this photo again, which is a candid photo. We’re fighting and I am IN the moment, dammit! My hair is flying with fury! I am unself-conscious! Unaware there’s even a camera! I am Method fighting.
I AM the fighter.
SHE, on the other hand? Posing.
Makes me wanna slap ‘er all over again.
I’m sorry. I can’t stop. It’s crack, people, CRACK!! I am one step away from forsaking family, friends, prestigious career, eating, sleeping, and bathing just to sustain my sorry addiction. And after that comes the intervention where I act clueless and defiant and mumble things like “Whuh?” and “So?” and “Wull, I doan do it that much” while family and friends read quavery-voiced from little papers clutched in their hands. Then after that comes my long and twitchy rehab with group sessions led by a woman named Mona and her flowy tunics and crinkle skirts and jade necklaces where I sit, slumped and alienated, making high-pitched scanning noises, “vvvvvvvtt. vvvvvvvtt. vvvvvvvtt,” while Mona clicks her tongue and chides, “Tracey, I realllly don’t think you’re doing the necessary worrrk,” and I mutter, “Whuh? Whuh?? Shuddup, Mona. Your skirt sucks …. vvvvvvvtt …. vvvvvvtt …. vvvvvvtt ….”
Eh. Sounds okay to me.
All righty! Denial — O-ON!!
This series is from older nephew’s 3rd (?) birthday party. I am a strange auntie, as you will see:
Here I am with nephew, where, just seconds before, I was meticulously demonstrating the proper way to play with fire. I had taken one of his LIT birthday candles, stuck it in some Play-Doh, and smushed it on my nose. So I had a flaming birthday candle on my face — whatever — and he saw that, bugged his eyes out, and started giggling hysterically. Seconds later, he climbed into the chair next to me and blew out my flaming nose. THANK GOD!! Because of the DANGER, you see, of FIRE!! Good thing his father was there, Johnny-on-the-spot with the appropriate response: snapping pictures!
Oh, and then nephew wanted the candle back — so that’s this photo. WHEW! Y’all just missed the DANGER!
Funny thing is, I swear I can hear the world-weary sighs from family members — who WERE in the room with me — actually feel the apathetic vibe, “Oh, don’t bother. It’s hopeless to intervene. Let’s just eat some cake.”
Thankfully, he seems to have survived unscathed by my instructional vignettes on how to live his life. But God only knows what that hideous “antique yellow” beadboard might have done to his tender psyche. Do you see that? “Whuh??”
Um, where I take a colorful balloon arrangement and hold it on his head, because it makes a fetching hat, a balloon bouquet, and I obviously think he should know this. That’s my hand there. Oh, and that’s how the picture was actually taken — with the hand all chopped off and creepy like something out of “Saw,” but without the blood. No, no. That came later. (The horror was definitely there, though, ” ….. and it was allll yellow.”) But this is one of my absolute favorite pictures of his little face. I cannot look at it without dissolving into laughter. That smile! Those eyes! Those cheeks! Smooshysmooshy goodness.
(I did something wrong in the scan of this one. My lipstick cannot be THAT red. I can literally hear it screaming, “Look! LOOK at my redred lips!” No. NO. Scanner error. Gotta be.)
(But yes, my hair is red here; just not as red as my redred lips.)
Anyway …. here’s the poor, traumatized tyke, allowing “Trashy” — as he called me — to snuggle him.
See?
“I AM NOT AN ANIMAL!!”*
(* Yes, it’s in “The Elephant Man,” but it’s in “Spartacus,” too!)
And within 20 minutes, I was obsessed with it.
And, soooo ….. because you asked — well, someone, somewhere, once, that I remember, asked for pictures of me, other than the ones with me in the throes of a messy drunken rage.
All right. So here ya go. Pictures — yes! — of me and My Beloved on our wedding day, circa: a dozen years ago. Why did I scan these? They were nearby in a box and I’m lazy.
(Oh, I cannot BELIEVE I’m doing this because, ugh — my HAIR! my DRESS! LORD!! I would change many, man-n-n-nny things about that day if I could. But first — my HAIR! my DRESS! OH, WHY GOD?? WHY??? HORRIFYING!!!!)
But — I’m sorry — My Beloved looks amazing! Commentary under photos.
I’m posing by my parents’ front door. There’s too much light behind me, so I look rather ghostly. I know you’re probably thinking, Huh. Seems to me like that giant HAIR HAT of hers coulda blocked out more of that light. Good thought. You know, really good thought.
My parents and me in the back yard. It looks like I’m talking. Yup, I’m probably talking. I always chatter nervously when my picture’s being taken. I do not like it — the chattering OR the picture-taking. Oh, and there’s my dad, being all hubba-hubba again. And mom looks so lovely.
The long-suffering man who married me in spite of my giant HAIR HAT. He is beautiful.
Oh, man. I choke up at this picture. Two of my most beloved faces in the world. This is one of my little flower girls. She’s 4 in this picture. I lived with her family — theatre friends of mine — for two years while MB and I were dating, so we all became like one big family, her parents, older sister, younger brother, and me. I LOVED those kids as if they were my own; we were all just so hopelessly devoted to each other. And those girls just LOVED My Beloved, too. Look at the expression on her face. They’re ‘dancing,’ but he’s just swept her up in his arms and she’s just holding him so so close. She looked at us like that the whole night, that look of total love and trust on her face. She was so excited when she found out we were getting married because she thought it meant that he was moving in with all of us. Oh, I can’t write about it anymore. Starting to choke. Just look at her. And him.
Staring at the floor?? My shoes?? A bug?? Head bowed from the weight of my giant HAIR HAT??
Hilarity ensuing. (Because of my giant HAIR HAT??) I just love that man.
Annd …. yes. I still have the same glass in my hands. Trust me.
Mom looks soo happy. And dad …. um, yowza! Stop looking at us like that.
We are …. twitterpated.
(He always blushes when I tease him about how “hot” he was — and still is, frankly. My dad is in the choir at their church and I’m tellin’ you, there is more than one warbly-voiced woman, biding her old lady time, just waiting for mom to crump it, all the while loudly wheezing, “OH, How I LOVE, er …. Jesus!”)
I’m onto you, old biddies.
Same photo. I just don’t know how to make them smaller.
Tracey, girrrl, look at you, all ahead of your time, sporting that brazen, peekaboo-undies look.
But, um, shot glass with clear liquid? *tsk, tsk, tsk* We all know what’s going on here. I suppose later on, you’ll be peeing yourself and expecting someone else to clean up the mess. Filthy drunk.
