Let us cruise through all of my awkward stages and bring to the surface all of the wonderful memories I have of being a redheaded and freckled faced girl with frizzy hair.
It all started off rather innocently.
Look at me...
Totally cute. My hair is all tame and I have on your typical little girl shirt of the eighties (which my mother has buttoned all the way to the top). People every where could ooohhh and ahhhh over how adorable I was and say things like "she could be so pretty when she is older" without ever having to cross their fingers.
This is the picture where you can start to see that my hair has a mind of its own.
It is just all taking off on one side like someone rubbed a balloon on it for a good ten minutes. And notice the pink dalmations outfit that could ONLY be bought for you by a grandmother.
Here is where we meet my teeth.
Oh yeah, lovely huh? Nothing like two big ass teeth sticking out at you. It was like they were trying to get away from each other. And there I was, all oblivious and just smiling with my mouth wide open so all the world could try to kick field goals between my buck teeth.
You can see in this picture that the freckles have declared ownership of my face.
And the fucked up thing is I remember being so very excited about taking this picture because I got to pick the color of the background. And not just that but the BLINDS in the background. Oh how effing cool we thought those colored blinds were. They were exciting enough that when I got this picture at the awkward age of tenish, I barely noticed the gaping hole in my front teeth.
Oh man, the tie dye and the cowboy hat, paired together.
As if I needed to give the world another reason to glance strangely my way. The obvious chunkiness that comes with puberty had taken over my neck and formed it into a lovely double chin. I remembered chopping my hair off since I had given up on every being able to do anything with it.
I don't even have anything for this one.
I just remember that we were doing yardwork and I threw a rock over my shoulder and it stuck in the tree and stayed there the entire time we lived in Hawaii.
I fucking love this shirt.
The BALLS I had to wear this, in public AND for a school picture. Note the scrunchie on the top of my head holding my unruly hair out of my face. At least I had finally started smiling with my mouth closed.
Notice the complete loss of hope here.
I had given up on trying to look like a normal person. My hair was frizzy and red no matter what I did and I had developed a nice little pooch belly. No matter how I smiled there was a double chin, so why smile?
Holy fucking ugly shirt batman!
Oh my god. Look at it.
It's just wrong.
The hair, the freckley pale skin, the UGLY striped shirt with the pink collar and just a hint of blue pocket!
You know there were some portrait people just laughing there asses off as they packaged this for my mother.
Welcome to the first picture in The Flannel Set.
Sometime in the early nineties, flannel suddenly became crazy popular. Which was exceptionally brutal to those of us who were teens and living in South Texas. But we suffered so we could just like every one else. My closet was FULL of flannel shirts which I proudly wore in the 100+ degree weather.
Flannel #2. Otherwise known as: the last one with the double chin.
My freshman picture in highschool. I had finally learned how to mellow my hair out and wear some makeup that didn't make me look like a hooker, but no matter how high I held my head, the chins were still there. You can see I was just starting to show my teeth again, not that they had become friends and stopped trying to run to separate sides of my mouth.
Flannel #3. Otherwise known as: The girl with the bushy hair.
I just know I was melting in that outfit. Jeans and a flannel and I'm sure this was like July. (You can tell because my hair is HUGE.)
Flannel #4. Otherwise known as: The girl with only one chin.
This is a picture of me and a girl I worked with when I was like 14. Notice: smiling with all my teeth and only one chin. Plus this was at a time when I used to mute the ever loving hell out of my freckles with concealer.
Yeah, I didn't do ANY drugs in high school.
This is the picture that had Amanda saying, "were you in jail Mommy?"
And finally, my sophomore photo.
Probably the only picture of myself that I liked for a LONG time.
So there you go, dear reader, all the pictures I have of my childhood.
All the frizzy hair and freckles and squinty eyed, buck toothed Kate you can handle. That picture below barely registers now, huh?
I have just given you all the blackmail photos you could ever dream of having :P
