Two views of me in a suit

These pictures weren't made that far apart, really. There's probably nineteen or twenty years between the two – and that's nothing these days. Nineteen or twenty years ago seems like yesterday to me now, but the nineteen- or twenty-year span shown here is much more significant. Going in age from five to twenty-four is a pretty large and significant leap.

I don't know the occasion of the first picture, the one of me at four or five looking very dapper (but a tad nervous), and I don't recognize or remember that suit. I suspect the picture was taken on a Sunday and I wore the suit to church; maybe it was Easter – though that usually called for a more colorful outfit – or maybe it was the day I was baptized. Or maybe the occasion was a wedding I have now forgotten; I'm not sure I ever actually went to a wedding when I was that young, but if I did, I would have worn a suit.

I'm not sure about the occasion of the second picture, either, but I recognize the suit – it was my "interview suit," which I bought especially for job interviews after I graduated from college. I also wore it to…well, anything I went to where a suit was appropriate: holiday parties, weddings (did I go to any back then?), funerals, etc. However, in the full, uncropped version of this picture, you can see that the house is decorated for Christmas, so I suspect I was dressed up for the ExecuTrain holiday party, probably in 1990 or 1991.

Today I don't even own a suit. If I were invited to a wedding I would have to go out and buy something to wear.

Me and Dad on My Birthday, 1978

I can't say for sure that this was my birthday, or indeed anyone's birthday. Maybe it was just some random day during my childhood when we had cake. With candles. And I got to blow out the candles.

Okay, I'm pretty sure this picture was taken on my birthday.

I'm also pretty sure it was taken in 1978 because of the shirt I'm wearing. I wrote about this in another musing; I got that shirt for Christmas when I was in fifth grade (which would have been in 1977), and my best friend Bobby Py got an identical shirt, and we spent the rest of the school year (until he moved away, anyway, in my memory near the end of the school year) trying to coordinate us wearing the same shirt to school on the same day. I don't think we ever managed it; I think the only day that both of us wore that shirt to school on the same day was sometime in January, when we both realized we had gotten the same shirt for Christmas.

So this picture was probably taken on or around my birthday in April of 1978, just a few months after Christmas of 1977.

Speaking of shirts, which I was just a few words ago, I also remember the shirt that Dad's wearing. I think he wore that shirt often. In fact, though this is probably not accurate, right now as I type this I picture him in that shirt in nearly every photograph we have from the 1970's or '80's. (Several hours later, I just looked through all of my scanned pictures in search of another picture of Dad wearing this shirt, and came up with nothing.)

But enough about shirts; now let's look at the house, and at us. In this picture, we are in the kitchen of our house in Lilburn, where at this point we had lived for five years, sitting at the table (which was round), right in front of the double folding doors that hid our washer and dryer (and I think also the water heater). Right behind us, visible between our heads, are some shirts that had come out of the dryer and been put on hangers and hung up (so as not to wrinkle, I imagine), but not yet put away to whatever closets they belonged in.

Dad is holding a book of matches, and is only 33 years old in this picture – more than 20 years younger than I am now. Mom, who is probably taking this picture, and who probably made the cake and hung up the shirts, but who is not otherwise seen in this picture, was 31 at the time. I don't know where Jeff was; he would have been eight then.