23 June 2011

Faded pictures. Faded memories

I have been going through my childhood photo album and pictures because the album is one of those static cling, sticky paper ones that truly does suck the life out of photographs.

There are a few realizations that I have had whilst going through this pictures:

I don't have normal milestones to identify pictures. Is the car wrecked? is one of my main identifiers when it comes to pictures. (both parents had drunk driving accidents when I was a child. *nice*) Was I married? I realize also don't have any pictures of me and my parents together.  Even pictures of my brothers and me are rare.

This album has pictures from grade school to nineteen years of age.  There are a handful of candid shots from grade, middle, and high school.  I wish I had taken more and am a little jealous of kids-these-days that have so many pictures of themselves.

I want to scan many of these pictures so I don't have to worry if they deteriorate.  With that thought, I considered posting some to the facebook but not everyone's memories are the same.  I'd hate that posting a picture might remind someone of an awful day when my intention is only "Remember this? Can you believe it?"

Am I overthinking this?

People take pictures of random stuff that may have meant something at the time but means eff-all thirty years later.  I'm throwing a lot of pictures away, which feels a little odd. It feels a little disrespectful, even though I am the one that took them.  Also, is it just me but it feels wrong to toss them. I reminded myself that some of these were taken by a 12 year old girl and who knows what I was trying to capture.

I've actually sent a handful of pictures to people because I figure that they will mean more to them than they do to me at this point of life.  While my memory of the people, places, things, in these pictures have faded or disappeared, I can bet that they are still vivid for others.

 What do you do with your childhood pictures?

1 comment:

Swistle said...

Pictures are strange, aren't they? I hesitate to throw out even ones that didn't turn out---maybe this is the photo that, later on, will make us exclaim "Oh, look who's in the background!!" or "There's that old couch!"

Pictures were the oddest thing we had to decide what to do with when my grandma died. She had a whole huge drawer of them, unlabeled, unsorted.