I wasn’t kidding. It’s the family sport. I spent my first summer fishing when I was six weeks old, laying in the bottom of the aluminum boat. After my grandfather (that guy up there) died, we really didn’t go anymore. We tried once, but it just wasn’t the same. It would be all in the distant past except for one extraordinary development. Small. He loves fishing. He started talking about wanting to fish when he was about 3, and he never let up. Last summer, he went to a fishing camp for a week and it was his own personal nirvana. There is a particular belief system out there that says that you are surrounded by the same people you love over and over again, lifetime after lifetime, getting chance after chance to work out the kinks. When your fishing gene has been dormant for twenty five years, and your baby boy becomes an aficionado out of nowhere, with little or no encouragement, it makes you wonder.
Forget Mistletoeing and hearts glowing, for me it is all about the things that go bump in the night. We’re actually a little late getting started this year, as usually the decorations go up no later than the first of October. (Target might be the only place Halloweened before our house.) We go spooky inside and out. We generally add one new element every year, but we’re getting pretty full up at this point. There are something like six assorted gigantic tubs and boxes full of the fright makings stowed in our garage as we speak. The boxes will be dragged out tomorrow and our home will transform from cozy to creepsville. We’re not one of those “Everyday is Halloween” families, but for one month out of the year, our blood runs black and orange.
Two things…
It is such a glorious day, is it not? No…it’s really not. We spent about half an hour picking out outfits tonight for the kids to wear in their pictures tomorrow. I’m not a control freak. I let them pick out what they want to wear, for the most part, with just a little steering. I do draw the line at tank tops. We did some compromising and came up with outfits acceptable by all parties. Small is quite the pickle. He might *seem* like he is all set, but when it comes time for him to step in front of the camera tomorrow, there are better than average odds that he will have stripped off his nice collared shirt for the t-shirt underneath. He’s done it before. I told him that this year, I’d like him to leave his shirt on for the picture. He owes me one after bamboozling me a couple years ago. Whatever he does, he probably won’t make a face like this one. 
Things improved slightly for me in first grade, as I got to wear my absolute favorite and BEST EVER outfit of all time. This one. I convinced myself that this getup was a reasonable replica of a stewardess uniform. A stewardess uniform, besides being awesome, was important for me to have in my wardrobe, because I had every intention of being an actual stewardess as soon as I was old enough. 
At some point, school pictures turn from cute and funny shots of sweet little kids to painful and awkward poses from tweens. I don’t know what was going on here. I remember the shirt, as usual. You can kind of get an idea of the puffy shoulders, although their full magnificence is just outside the frame. This is in something like 1982, when Gunny Sax was king, and the whole “Prairie” thing was perfectly acceptable as a fashion choice. Adding to the stellar capture of a moment in time here, is the faint glint of my braces just barely visible through my slightly parted lips. (They didn’t close without some effort due to said braces) I believe this was also the first, but certainly not the last perm I would sport while in my larval stage. I wouldn’t become acquainted with a tweezer in any meaningful way for YEARS to come. Check out the super full brows. I was fortunate to escape the unibrow that menaced my brother, but wow. 
