The Sunday Memory Drawer - Who's the Chick?

Another sterling example of my father at work with his old Technicolor camera. And my face now is as red as my jacket in this picture. Embarrassment and mortification as only can be supplied by a parentally staged photo. And, to make matters worse...

I have no fucking clue who the girl is.

I have no recollection of any of this. Conveniently, her face is away from the camera and she remains a mystery just like that woman in a veil who showed up at Rudolph Valentino's crypt once a year. I am probably six or seven years old, way too young to be wearing an outfit that makes me look like Allen Ludden on Password. We are obviously in the middle of some dance move and I look incredibly uncomfortable being jerked around by some chick. Alas, a harbinger of many more jerks to come.

We've discussed this here before and I still can't come to definitive grips with these photos that my parents loved to stage. And I am finding more and more of them, so, apparently, my childhood was even worse than what I can remember. You've already seen me in the tutu and in the short pants while holding a machine gun. But, there are countless others.

It was one thing to be posed badly at a family gathering. But, my folks branched out considerably. There would be the many times they would get together with non-relatives. Friends from their workplaces and/or school. The mothers and the fathers gab in the kitchen, while you are thrown into an afternoon or evening of play with another kid or two. Somebody you saw maybe once or twice a year, but were immediately forced to get totally intimate with it over some Colorforms. Personally, I could easily have spent the day alone, dressing Willie the Weatherman for a blustery Monday morning. But, no, you had to go play...and share toys...with a relative stranger.

One such kid that keeps popping up in the old photos is Joanne. The daughter of one of my dad's workbuddies. Before I was born, the two couples would travel all over together. Then, the mom on the other side contracted cerebral palsy and was bound to a wheelchair forever. Nevertheless, they still got together. And virtually threw me and Joanne together for some merriment. Frequently photographed and staged as if Joanne and I were destined to spend life together as a couple with slippers under the bed and total agreement over the color of drapes for the living room.

I look at all these pictures today and I wonder what the fuck was going through our parents' heads at the time. Because Joanne and I were forced to pose in the oddest and most inappropriate ways. Arms around each other's waists. Cheek to cheek. Child pornography in its and my infancy. Don't get excited, folks. I'm not posting them here. I will have to be doing a blog entry completely liquored up before that will happen. Trust me. They are bad.

One photo comes from the summer of perhaps my fifth or sixth year. Joanne and I are sitting in a backyard pool. Our legs are straddling one another. And, in those days, little girls often wore bathing suits without tops. So, there we sat. With my arms around her breasts. I can hear my dad now.

"Say.....cheese!"

Those folks disappeared from our lives after the handicapped mom passed on. Of course now, everybody has passed on. But I wonder what the hell happened to Joanne. Does she have a copy of these photos and is she equally appalled? Is she married? Does she have kids? How many guys have felt up her breasts since then?

And has her husband seen the pool picture? Because he would then know.

I was there first.

Dinner last night: In an odd quirk of fate, I have for the third night in a row...sausage and peppers. Went to my favorite Italian restaurant in Yonkers---Carlo's. And they make it the best of anybody.