Hindsight.
I said I'd get her some pictures from back when we used to hang out in the mid '80s. I asked if I should email them rather than just posting them online in case she wants to censor them first. Turns out there wasn't really anything incriminating at all I could find. I wish I took more pictures back then. You have no idea when the great times of life are happening. You have no idea until you think back, and then wish you had a picture. Every time you think of a memory, it gets rewritten into your brain, and a little gets lost. Scientific fact.
One day, I came home and found a picture of mine, framed, on the bookshelf in the living room. It was a picture of me, if I can remember accurately, playing guitar, and smoking a cigarette. Mom apparently "found" some pictures of the gang and me, and, according to her, liked that one. I think she was just trying to embarrass me into quitting smoking. I guess it was embarrassing for some reason because I never let her see me smoke. One time, Lex and I went into that cafe on 18th Street, sat at a table, and I pulled out a smoke. Before I could light it, mom showed up and exclaimed, "caught ya!" I told her it didn't count because it wasn't lit yet. She was laughing when she snuck up on us. She left, and I'm not sure I lit that cig once she was gone. What's funny to me now is that we used to smoke in the house all the time, and thought mom wouldn't smell it. Now, if someone walks by my apartment door with a lit cigarette, I can smell it from a couple rooms away, but for some reason we thought three of us smoking in the basement of Pine Street wouldn't be obvious. The heating system probably circulated our Camels and Marlboros through the whole house.
Give your kids cameras. And a printer. Don't make them show you the pictures. They'll be happy to have records of the ups and downs to share with each other when so many years have passed that the pictures and those times are all you have left in common. Yeah, you're gonna want to see the pictures your kid is taking because it could be evidence, plus with digital and the internet and social networking sites, pictures can lure an unfriendly element into the scene. But understand what looks like something you should get angry about is probably, for the same reason, going to be a cherished memory some day.
One day, I came home and found a picture of mine, framed, on the bookshelf in the living room. It was a picture of me, if I can remember accurately, playing guitar, and smoking a cigarette. Mom apparently "found" some pictures of the gang and me, and, according to her, liked that one. I think she was just trying to embarrass me into quitting smoking. I guess it was embarrassing for some reason because I never let her see me smoke. One time, Lex and I went into that cafe on 18th Street, sat at a table, and I pulled out a smoke. Before I could light it, mom showed up and exclaimed, "caught ya!" I told her it didn't count because it wasn't lit yet. She was laughing when she snuck up on us. She left, and I'm not sure I lit that cig once she was gone. What's funny to me now is that we used to smoke in the house all the time, and thought mom wouldn't smell it. Now, if someone walks by my apartment door with a lit cigarette, I can smell it from a couple rooms away, but for some reason we thought three of us smoking in the basement of Pine Street wouldn't be obvious. The heating system probably circulated our Camels and Marlboros through the whole house.
Give your kids cameras. And a printer. Don't make them show you the pictures. They'll be happy to have records of the ups and downs to share with each other when so many years have passed that the pictures and those times are all you have left in common. Yeah, you're gonna want to see the pictures your kid is taking because it could be evidence, plus with digital and the internet and social networking sites, pictures can lure an unfriendly element into the scene. But understand what looks like something you should get angry about is probably, for the same reason, going to be a cherished memory some day.
posted by josh at 3/11/2009 02:38:00 AM
3 Comments:
basement?
I guess the basement was before your time.
ah. yeah.
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