Wednesday, June 18, 2008

cult of me

My mother recently handed me a large envelope full of pictures of me; mostly those dreaded school pictures that have a 50/50 chance of looking good or horrible regardless of what you do to prep before hand. School pictures. I have a million of them; 25 little squares showing how awful I looked in ninth grade. I'm not sure how I feel about them. Also, I'm not sure what to do with them.

I have a baby book, and a scrap book of sorts from my childhood years. And another one from my jr high/ high school years. And one for my mission in France. I have little books filled with funny information about myself. Oodles of photographs that I have whittled down over the years, but still, a lot of pictures. I have journals filled with the silly, silly scribbles of adolescents. Part of me is really tempted to throw them away. I have letters to friends, letters from friends. Cards. Postcards. Little notes. I have my old cheerleading uniform. And my pompoms. Oh yeah. And the yearbooks. Can't forget about those yearbooks.

What do I do with it all? Scale back on what I have? Save it for posterity? Will they really be interested?

Our culture is sort of document crazy. We take pictures of everyone and everything, everywhere. Thanks to the merger of phones and cameras. (We won't get into the whole blogging thing. That's an entire post of it's own.) But do we really want to keep it all? I don't. I just have to figure out how much I want to save, and how much I really don't want to haul around with me. Except that it's me! And I'd like to consider myself a hard person to throw away. You know.

3 comments:

  1. It's difficult to know what to keep.. but I have to say I treasure every photo that I have of my grandparents.. even the Jr. High ones. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Family history buffs around the world die to run into pictures and other paraphernalia. But of course it takes years before such items become historical treasures as opposed to old junk in the attic. I'm grateful for those who have held on to some of this stuff but I just don't want to store it myself.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yes! What an intriguing thing - these old pictures of ourselves, what to do with them, and how to love that awkward preteen with the glasses, braces and bad perm (speaking of course for myself)?

    ReplyDelete