New Kid on the Sidebar

Following the Andante and NTodd example and now in a pictures mood, I thought I'd include on my sidebar a picture from when I was a small child. I think it's not too much of an exaggeration to say that I'm still recognizable here. The circle of life is fast closing in on itself.

I am four or thereabouts here, so that this photo is at least 72 years old. It was printed on glossy stock,which must have been new in drugstore film developing at the time, and it is badly cracked but not faded. I'm holding what looks to be a candied apple. It must be during one of the cold months because I'm wearing an overcoat and a scraggly cap thing that years ago I made a note of, saying that I remembered that cap and it was a bright orange. I no longer remember that. The Great Depression is in full swing, as is Jim Crow, and Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo are all on the march, but I'm not aware of any of that stuff. In fact I don't seem to be aware of anything of a dark nature here. Instead I'm happy, because I'm at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C, where my father is taking my picture, and maybe the rest of my tiny immediate family, namely my mother and my younger sister, were also there -- all of them now long since deceased.

At this very early stage in a person's life, the process of the blissful ignorance shown in this picture being stripped away by the constant arrival of new information has already started, but it still has a way to go before that process begins to be really revved up. In this case that intensification began with my father, who, following the taking of this picture, turned out to have only two more years or less to spend with us in this life.