Rant #1,257: Class Photos

Yesterday's entry about my mom finding my first grade photo sparked my renewed interest in class photos of mine, and I started digging.

I know that I have all my class photos. Most of them were sent to me by former classmates, because my mother claims that she has nothing of mine or my sister.

Of course, what she found over the weekend kind of says to me that if she has time to dig, she will probably find everything.

But that being said, I have found some class photos of mine from days of yore.

But finding those photos also has allowed me to rediscover myself, to a certain extent.

I feel that I haven't changed at all.

Sure, in those photos I have hair, I am a lot lighter in weight and certainly have a different spirit than I do now.

But I really haven't changed much.

I am really a kid in adult's clothing. Sure, I have grown up in age, but I am still a kid at heart.

I never liked ties, never liked liverwurst, and I still don't.

I loved baseball and music and TV, which I still do.

I believed in family, my country, and although I was never religious, I do believe in God, and always have believed in these things.

But it is nice to have these keepsakes of another time, because they have etched in sort of a permanent memory where I was way back when.

And that is the real beauty of class photos.

They bring you back to another time, perhaps the most important part of your life, when you were growing up and learning about the world around you.

You learned a lot of what was going on not only from the teachers in those photos, but from your peers, the kids who were also in these photos.

Many of them were your friends, some of them were simply classmates of yours, but you learned through them, whether you realized it or not, through osmosis, if nothing more.

And that learning experience, coupled with many others, made you what you became.

Anyway, without getting too metaphysical, I just love these photos, and I also love to see other people's photos too.

They are visual time capsules, and that makes them so much fun.

And if you have kids, don't ever lose these photos. They are really prizes of your kids' childhoods, and when they become adults, these photos will have even more meaning to them.

Put them in a safe place!

And again, a shout out to my mom, who found what I consider to be the mother of all my class photos.

One question--was a class photo taken during kindergarten?

I have no idea, but if one was taken, and I could see it, that would really be extra special.