Wednesday, November 19, 2014

The cake incident of 1982


cake incident
Originally uploaded by JoBiv!.
People are always clamoring for pictures of JoBiv. Why, clamorers? Why?

Well, the day has finally come. I chose an oldie but a goodie, and I hope you like it. There I am in the middle, with Cripps on the left (funny, he's left-handed) and Smacks on the right. This telling photo comes from what was likely to be someone's birthday, because we didn't have cake often in our house. Can you imagine, three boys and a little girl in one house. Would you give us sugar? And you shoulda seen Smacks on sugar. Alarming, I believe, is the most accurate term.

Anywaysss, my evil mother always kept the camera on hand just in case we broke down in tears, or this is what I've come to believe after sifting through our albums. Many a life-affirming moment has been caught on Kodachrome - Smacks' head stuck in the next-door neighbor's deck rungs, Smacks post blue chalk-eating experiment, JoBiv giving herself a bath in the bathroom sink and getting stuck there... etc. Okay, Cripps and Tom didn't cry as much. Cripps wasn't on Earth with us, and Tom was high. Or somewhere else.

In this case it's impossible to know the true prompt for this bout of tears, but my brothers sure do look guilty. Happily guilty. I mean, could I really be that miserable when I was given a piece of cake and free reign - sans utensil or parental help - to shove it into my mouth? And my ear canal and nostrils, apparently. Perhaps I was protesting the busy wallpaper, or the hand-me-down pants, or maybe I was simply being a two-year-old pain in the ass. If it weren't for those smiles and the strategically hidden hands, I could believe it was just a moment of artistically inspired tempestuous moodiness on my part.

Or perhaps this is early proof of my disdain for posing for cameras.