Positively Glorious!

Eventually, after time mellows things, there will be much about my mother’s funeral dumped into The Pit of Despair. For now, however, I have a more comical find. While going through my mother’s– shall we say “extensive”– collection of photographs¹ I found a couple collections of me as a boy. I’ll forego the visit to Slideshow Boredom Hotel, and give you only two.

What do you mean? This IS my kill face!

This is me in the Army at bootcamp. They told us that we had to take a picture with our “kill” face. After about 5 minutes of coaching, my drill seargent just gave up on me and said “That’s good enough, get the hell out of my sight!”

After fighting in Desert Storm. This is me: "hardened"

This is me in Navy bootcamp, after going through the Army and fighting in Desert Storm. You’d think that being in an actual war would harden me. You know, make me into more of a badass or something. I will say that Navy bootcamp was a joke, and mostly consisted of my laughing at their feable attempts to scare me. However, I can’t make any claims to deserving the word “badass.” I’d say “little boy” more hit’s the mark!

Most of the experience of going through my mother’s apartment was terribly troubling. Finding pictures of me as a kid brought a bunch of smiles to my face.

1. She had childhood pictures of my grandmother’s nextdoor neighbor’s parents… as children. No, that is not a joke. [↩]