It was 2003, and I was managing the Beat Goes On location on Fairway Road. A newer employee named Lori was on the shift. She was great with customer service, but even she could not help the large man with the heavy Caribbean accent that walked into our store that evening. He was friendly, upbeat…and infinitely frustrating.
“You got any Luta?” he asked Lori. I always listened to the employee interactions with customers so I could step in when necessary. This one perked my ears up because I had never heard of any artist named “Luta”. I had been in the store about eight years at that point and had heard just about every name you can think of, from “DJ Rectangle” to “Who” (not THE Who, not THE GUESS Who, not DOCTOR Who, just Who). So, when an unfamiliar name came up, I was always willing to help a less experienced employee.
Lori searched “Luta” to no avail, so I stepped over to her terminal to help.
“How do you spell it?” I asked the man. He didn’t know. “Loo-tah” is how he pronounced it, with emphasis on the “Loo”.
I said, “Is it L-u-t-a?” to which he responded, “Yeah, man.” Not that I doubted Lori’s search, but I typed it in, as well as “Lootah” and anything else I could think of. Our database was alphabetical, so as long as you had the first few letters right, you could scroll up and down and see what was similar. I found nothing.
“Are you sure it’s Luta?” I asked. “One name, just Luta?”
“Yeah man,” he responded. “You don’t know Luta?” he laughed in his accent.
“No I’m sorry, I have never heard of him before,” I responded in the negative.
“‘Dance With My Father’,” said the guy.
Suddenly, it clicked. “Dance With My Father” was a new hit by Luther Vandross.
Luther. Luta. Luther Vandross.
Mystery solved! The lesson here is, at least know the first and last names of the artist you’re searching for when you walk into a music store!
RECORD STORE TALES #1161: The Last Note of Freedom: Season 2024 Comes to an End
As much as Record Store Tales is about music, and personal music history, it has also become a related sub-story about mental health and seasonal affective disorder. It was only during the early years of publishing Record Store Tales that I was forced to deal with it. This has been a musical journey, and a rocky road of personal struggle, triumph, setbacks, and triumph all over again. A big part of my problem is my seasonal affective disorder, which I have been open about for years. I get depressed in the winter: facts! My genes are Mediterranean, and I was not built for snow or months of dark skies. And so, it is sad to say that the cottage season of 2024 is officially at its end. But what a year it was.
The year of drones! Every year I want to level up my video-making abilities. I never know what exactly that will be until I stumble upon it. One year, it was the discovery of super-slow-mo videos. This year I took the skies! My cottage videos were dominated by drones this year. A satisfying artistic triumph, and a super fun hobby that I highly recommend.
I called this chapter “The Last Note of Freedom” because that’s the song that I chose to use in my last cottage drone video of the year. The same David Coverdale song that was inexplicably used in my high school graduation slideshow. It always signals endings and beginnings to me, besides being a great song. A good one one which to end the summer 2024 flying season. Maybe this winter we’ll see if I can fly in the snow.
Meanwhile, back at home, this was also the summer that we discovered deep dish pizza. I have always been curious but wary. This summer, we found not one but two local places that serve up (and deliver) reasonably authentic deep dish. (The “delivery” part is important because I don’t really enjoy going out to eat.) And so, along with droning, deep dish pizza will become a winter activity when we have the blues. I very much enjoy the thick gooey cheese, and the tomato sauce was a lot more enjoyable than I expected. While it is not for everyone, and definitely a very different kind of pizza, I would say that deep dish is indeed pizza. (There’s a whole debate about this.)
More food experiments will happen as we hunker down for another cold winter. I’ve always wanted to try one of those ramen places, and soup is perfect for winter. We also have to try a few “indoor steaks” when we start to go into beef withdrawl.
Yes, I’m optimistic.
And so as we say goodbye to summer and the cottage, we look forward to what comes this winter. Lots of music, lots of new things, and always with a focus on creativity.
The first Halloween costume I distinctly remember wearing was a robot suit. My mom and dad got a big cardboard box, cut out a head hole and some arm holes, and helped me decorate it with tinfoil. Then another box became the head. I drew on buttons and knobs with crayons. I was so excited to be a robot that night. That is, until I saw an older kid with a way better robot suit. His had lights! I briefly wondered if he was a real robot and dismissed the thought.
My costumes were sometimes store-bought, sometimes home made. Darth Vader was a plastic mask and glow-in-the-dark sword. Frankenstein was a costume I made myself, using cardboard to cut a square-ish wig, and green face paint. It was so difficult to wash all that green off in the bathtub that night. There was a green ring around the tub that my dad was furious about. It’s very likely I went out as Empire Strikes Back Han Solo in 1980. I already had the costume: a blue hooded snow coat, goggles, with a gun and holster. Another classic Harrison Ford costume was Indiana Jones. I used brown makeup to simulate a 5 o’clock shadow, and had a rope-whip and a gun. I was mistaken for a cowboy, which really peeved me. How could you have not heard of Indiana Jones in 1981? Maybe my costume just wasn’t good enough.
In 1984, my mom sewed us elaborate Ewok costumes. While I wore mine that night, I wore a different costume to school: that of a Cobra trooper from GI Joe! I painted some red Cobra logos on a blue helmet, pulled my shirt up over my nose like a balaclava, and armed myself with a rifle. Back when you could bring toy guns to school! Weren’t those the days? School was very particular about Halloween. You had to participate. If you didn’t bring a costume to school that day, the teacher would take a garbage bag, cut some holes in it, and force you to wear that. I’m not kidding.
I went out for Halloween one more time in grade nine, but that was the last year. I may have only gone to one house: the “fudge house”. There was an elderly couple who made home-made fudge. It was so good, and so popular, that some kids would change costumes and go two or three times. It was very sugary fudge, but so good. Then, the era of Bob-Halloweens began!
From grade 10 onwards, Bob Schipper and I started making out own haunted houses. That’s its own story, but I dressed as Alice Cooper that year. I painted up a black jacket with flames and wore a sword at my side. Doing Halloween haunted houses was our thing for a few years, each time getting more elaborate. We had mummies, scary sounds, flashing lights, spiders and cobwebs, and lots more. It was a passion project. We would spend a month or two preparing for Halloween. November 1st always sucked. Nobody likes cleanup.
When Bob moved on to college and doing his own things, I was left to man the fort by myself. My first Halloween alone was 1991, and a lonely one it was. I began preparing to do the haunted house, alone. Without Bob’s collaboration or input, I made my usual mix tape of scary sounds. I always took these sounds from cassettes I already owned. The bit from Judas Priest’s recent “Night Crawler” with Rob Halford talking about the monster at the door was my latest addition to the scary sound library. When I put the tape together, my sister said there’s “too much Judas Priest!” She was right, but without Bob, I was left to my own devices. I did what I wanted to, for better or for worse.
1991 was a lonely Halloween. It wasn’t fun anymore. It was a lonely time in general. Up until then, I looked forward to our Halloween creativity. I didn’t bother anymore after that. We were seeing fewer and fewer kids at the front door, and for me, without Bob, what was the point?
RECORD STORE TALES #1159: The Community is Dead – Long Live the Community!
Once Upon A Time, the old WordPress music Community was an important part of our daily breakfast. It was a wonderful way to connect and talk music with like-minded folks. It was even a good way to seek support in our lives.
Then in 2023, the Community died. I don’t know why, and I no longer care. It’s possibly a “type of feint, or fake technique, whereby a player draws an opposing player out of position or skates by the opponent while maintaining possession and control of the puck.” People just…disappeared. Ghosted. I actually don’t want to know why. “Let the past die,” Kylo Ren said. “Kill it, if you have to.” That is done, but not by my own hand.
I knew it was dead in 2024, when several people from the old Community refused to watch or acknowledge my trip to Toronto with Aaron, the Community’s spiritual leader. It was a shunning, with intent. Rest in peace, Community!
Whatever their issues are, I hope they find peace and harmony, wherever they went and whatever they are doing now. I miss them. But there was a silver lining.
A new Community awaited me. A bigger, more welcoming Community. A Community that stretches from Australia to America, east coast to west, and up north to Canada. A stronger Community. For me it began as the old Community died in 2023. Marco D’Auria encouraged me to work with the Contrarians, and suddenly I started getting invites to appear on other shows, such as Rock Daydream Nation and My Music Corner. With these fine folks, together, we have rebuilt what was lost. Bigger, better, faster, stronger!
I welcome you to the Community! A place where we support each other, collaborate, and celebrate the power of music! A place where you will not be judged for your mistakes, nor shunned.
I have held off telling this tale long enough! There are many reasons why I haven’t told this story until now, but here are the two main ones:
I didn’t want to upset my grandmother.
I don’t know anything about witchcraft at all, therefore I don’t want to seem like I’m making fun of someone’s religion.
However, I also think it’s amusing to say the sentence, “I dated a witch once”. So here we go.
I explained in Record Store Tales #904: 2000 Dates, I did a lot of online dating in the year 2000. Every time, it seemed the girl had something unique about her. For example:
One girl was the cousin of Haywire singer Paul MacAusland, and suffered from I osteogenesis imperfecta, the same disease that affected Mr. Glass in the Unbreakable trilogy. We went out once, and she wasn’t into me.
One was legally blind! She got into that movie The Cell with Jennifer Lopez and Vincent D’onofrio for free. She was starting a new life in a new town and I don’t think I was her best prospect. I stopped hearing from her, until one day she accidentally emailed me. I think we went out twice total. She had awesome black dreads.
This story is about none of those women.
Cynthia was from Toronto. She shared her surname with a prominent Star Trek character. She was into Sloan and A Perfect Circle. She took horrible care of her CDs. We wanted to listen to music, and I suggested 4 Nights at the Palais Royale by Sloan, but the discs were all mixed up in her collection. I knew it wasn’t going to work out.
We had one day together. I drove up to Toronto, got lost, and had a huge panic attack on my way there. No GPS, but I did have a cell phone. That was actually the end right there. It had nothing to do with her. It was the drive. I knew I’d never do that drive again.
Besides listening to music, I watched Cynthia work. She was an online psychic. I’m a sceptic, but the kind that would like to be convinced. She got on her computer, opened a word file, and began responding to emails. She scrolled through her word file, found a paragraph she liked, and hit “copy”. “This one will work,” she said. She had all her “psychic” readings pre-written; she just selected one that applied to the question. “I do real ones sometimes,” she justified to me. Sometimes. Not that night though.
We went for a walk, we talked, and Cynthia tried to explain her religion to me. She was a “weather witch”, she told me. She practiced Wicca. Wicca and witchcraft, she explained, were not interchangeable terms, but she was both. I was pretty clear that I was comfortable where I was spiritually, but hey, cool. I very much had a “you do you” attitude when it came to religion. We were both raised Catholic, so we had that in common. She had two roommates, also Wiccan. They had a picture up in their main entrance of their horned god, which was interesting, but they didn’t laugh when I commented that their god appeared “horny”. Come on, cut the new guy some slack!
I made it home on Highway 401 in one piece. I knew I’d never be going back. It was a matter of telling her. She did not take it well.
Cynthia had made for me a little magic pouch to protect me on the highway. When I told her I could not do that drive again, she was quite upset. “I’ll take the bus to you!” she offered. There were tears…I felt awful. I had described her as a “stage 5 clinger” before, which is unkind but not untrue. It was the first time I had experienced something like this. I went from indifferent dates, to this!
I went out the night of that phone call with some friends to a round of mini-golf. It helped me get my mind off things. I shared that I was slightly afraid she’d cast a spell on me. You always say “Oh but magic and witches aren’t real,” but I thought, “Cynthia didn’t think so.” What’s real? And what the hell did I know at age 28? We laughed a lot during that round of mini-golf, but then my friend Will prank called my car phone pretending to be an angry friend of Cynthia’s. That took some calming down after. Later, I was teased at a staff party by my co-workers about the kinds of spells she would put on me for dumping her. You can see why I haven’t told this story before.
Sometimes I wonder what happened to all these people I went out with during that period of time. Married, with adult kids now? Do they even remember me? I’m the one writing all this; maybe I’m the clinger after all.
RECORD STORE TALES #1157: The Lone Classic Hard Rocker
For almost my entire tenure at the Beat Goes On, I was pretty much the only “classic hard rocker”. By that I mean, the guy who not only liked Rush, Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath, but also Poison, Dokken, Motley Crue, Kiss, and the Scorpions. I started in 1994, and hard rock was definitely the black sheep of the musical family back then. The entire genre had received a hard thrashing from the new generation of bands, who had cleaned the slate and wiped the charts of the old guard. For a little while, anyway. When I began in 1994, hard rock was all but banned from store play. That’s obviously a broad statement, as I distinctly recall giving a store play copy of Tesla’s Bust A Nut a shot while working with the boss. He didn’t like it, but there was no way I was going to play Poison in the store with him around.
“Nobody’s buying that stuff,” he would say, and he wasn’t wrong.
When Trevor started later that year, he too liked a lot of hard rock bands, but he probably more into the current crop of groups. Brother Cane, and this new snotnosed group out of the UK called Oasis. He discovered all that Britpop stuff on a trip to England, and he was quick to adapt to electronic and dance beats too. While he enjoyed some Poison and Motley Crue, I don’t think he would have played them in store. I don’t think he would have called himself a hard rocker.
When I was bestowed my own store to manage in 1996, my staff gave me a nickname: Cheeser.
The reason being, I listened to “cheesey” music, such as hard rock. They wouldn’t give me credit for the jazz albums, or the Faith No More collection. They only looked at the Dokken and the Brighton Rock. I should have said, “Don’t call me Cheeser. I’m your boss.” Not that I was opposed to nicknames. Many employees had nicknames of their own, but that one really bugged me. It was unfair and it was uncool. It was one-dimensional. I remained the only classic hard rocker at the store. Oh sure, one guy liked the Black Crowes. Another guy had a soft spot for classic 70s Kiss. They were not hard rockers in that classic “cheeser” sense.
I look back on those days, and I was very different then. I was not assertive. I was eager to fit in. So, I let them call me Cheeser.
I felt like a second-class citizen due to my musical tastes. The boss seemed to think playing a Poison in the album would lose us sales. He wanted a family-friendly atmosphere, and I tended to be the rebel when he wasn’t around. I was told to remove AC/DC from the CD player once. An band that has sold about 200 million copies worldwide, incidentally, but with God as my witness, my boss hit the “stop” button one morning and took it off himself.
This is why I had low sales, I was assured. You wanted people to linger and shop. People would leave the store if the music was too heavy. I only saw it happen a couple times, but no more than I saw it happen with other genres of music such as rap and dance. It was rare you’d have a walk-out due to the music, but I will argue that hard rock did not get this reception any more than other genres. I do remember one guy giving me credit for playing Poison’s Native Tongue one afternoon.
“I’ve never heard this before in a music store!” he said, with his compliments.
I would get the occasional surprised reaction when people would ask what the cool music I played was. Motley Crue? Poison? No way! That doesn’t sound like Poison.
Our store was very generic “music store circa late 90s early 2000s” when you walked in. There would be music playing from the current charts, lots of indi bands with cool haircuts, and the requisite Motown, soul, and 60s albums. Exactly the music you expected to hear, and I suppose that was the point. If my manager reviews were poor, one of the gripes was the music I chose to play. I broke the rules, and they made note of it. I became quite despondent. I would pick five CDs in the morning, that I picked for the soul purpose of not getting in shit that day, and I hit shuffle. I’d leave them in all day. Or, I would just leave in whatever the previous shift had playing. I literally stopped caring, because those above me had sucked me dry. I had no soul left. My heart was empty. It was time to go.
By the end, my only motivation was survival. There was no enjoyment. There was no challenge. There was nothing to look forward to, except a day off. I was dead inside. I couldn’t care about music anymore. The music I played in the store towards the end…I can’t remember the bands. I seem to remember names like Death Cab For Cutie, Death From Above 1979, and Metric, but I cannot tell you if those were bands we played in the store, or bands that the staff liked. Eventually, some of their musical tastes wore off on me. I did buy a Killers CD, and I did buy one Bright Eyes. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, but I have not played either in over 15 years.
I know some of my old co-workers and staffers were surprised to hear all these revelations from me. What can I say? I was fakin’ it. I was fighting, quite frankly, to stay alive at that place. You can take that to mean whatever you like. In those days, I was not aware of the importance of mental health. The store was run with a real old school “pick yourself up by the bootstraps” methodology. I remember one day, my boss handed me a business card with the name of a counselling service on it. I didn’t ask for this, and I considered it a huge invasion of my privacy. I also considered it an invasion of my privacy when he called my parents behind my back at their home. Yet, when I wanted him to listen to me, the only person who could possible change my fate, he didn’t listen. He waited to talk. He lectured. The bullying situation at the store had reached unacceptable levels, and he was so biased towards certain people, that I had no hope. None at all.
I went from being the lone classic hard rocker, to completely alone. It was a very dark time in my life. I am sorry if my old friends do not understand why I had such anger for the people in charge. I know I am not the only person to feel alone, but what happened, happened. It was an emotional time and I wrote about it emotionally. It was a necessary expulsion of bad feelings and poison.
But not Poison. Today there’s nobody calling me Cheeser. They might shrug and wonder why I need so much Poison, but the difference is respect.
RECORD STORE TALES #1156: To What Lengths? (Shelf Wear)
We, as collectors in this community, generally buy our music on a physical format to listen to it, but also value its condition and cosmetic perfection. We don’t want creases in the inner sleeve, or banged-up covers if we can avoid it. We especially don’t like being the ones responsible for damage. It does happen. Sometimes it’s as simple as pulling a favourite CD or LP out of its designated filing location too many times. Scratches and scuffs appear on the jewel case or sleeve, if not protected. Most people protect their vinyl LPs in plastic, and a small minority of CD aficionados do as well, which mitigates damage to just those moments you remove the packaging from that sleeve: the dirt and oils in your hands, the dust in the air, the light wear from handling.
If you’re new here, this is a judgement-free place! If you go to tremendous degrees to protect your jewel cases (I had one customer who bought them 5 at a time and insisted each one be in its own separate little bag) then I applaud you. I wish I had your discipline, honestly. I’ve cracked and scuffed many-a-case over my years as a fan and collector.
Another fact known to CD collectors: Many, especially in the 1990s, came in specialised jewel cases that could not easily replaced if damaged. The best you could hope for was a Krazy Glue solution. Example: Pet Shop Boys’ Very CD in 1993, which came in a unique, opaque orange case with lego-like bumps on the front and a sticker with track listing on back. It had a matching orange tray inside. Fortunately, these were a bargain bin perennial and if you broke you case, you could buy a replacement for under $6 bucks. If not, you could do a reasonable repair job with glue.
Coloured jewel cases were another variation. With collector’s allure, Alice In Chains’ self-titled CD in 1995 came in two variations. The common one was a yellow case with a purple inlay. The very rare reverse was purple case with yellow inlay. So rare in fact that in my 12 years in music retail, I never saw a copy come my way without one or both components damaged. Less rarely, Kiss’ 1996 CD You Wanted The Best, You Got the Best came in a wine-red case with yellow tray. I may or may not have swapped some at my store with plain cases, allowing me to keep the wine-red and yellow for myself, for other Kiss releases. Perhaps I did.
Regardless of how you acquire such packages, the ideal collection has them relatively intact for the duration of their stay at your home. How to do ensure this to the best of your ability? As implied, I don’t want to put every CD I own in a sleeve. However, I do make sleeves for discs like the above. Simple ones out of clear comic bags (for example) cut down to size. They even make sandwich bags in the exact right size if you feel lazy. Remember: no judgement!
Of course, this cannot prevent breakage all the time. If you have ever moved house with boxes of CDs, you probably endured some damage. When I moved, I did two important things: 1) I insisted only I handled the boxes marked “CDs”, and 2) I packaged all specially-cased CDs in a special padded box, also handled by myself.
Another variation, and perhaps my favourite, is the engraved jewel case. One of the most common is the Prince “Love Symbol” CD, fairly easy to find multiple intact copies. My most treasured engraved case is Deep Purple’s 25th anniversary edition of In Rock. (Now we’re over 50 years…) I bought my copy in 1996, in Toronto, at (I think) Sunrise. It was there or HMV, and I was present with the mighty T-Rev, who braved the streets of Toronto with no air conditioning on a hot summer day in my Plymouth Sundance. He drove – I wouldn’t. I cradled my precious Purple in my arms so carefully on my way home. I could see easily that the signatures and text on the front were in the plastic of the case, and not printed on the booklet.
I made a plan, and carefully executed it. My solution protects my CD to this day.
Using a Swiss Army knife, I carefully slit the right side of the plastic wrap, all around the entire CD, and removed this side flap. I then carefully coaxed the CD out of its plastic home, and upon success, pushed it back in. I had created a little sleeve that protected my new purchase upon my shelves. It still functions today, and my copy of In Rock still looks pretty good despite hundreds of plays.
My best friend, Bob Schipper, spent most of the summer of 1986 out on Alberta with his brother Martin. The two of us had been joined at the hip for summer after summer. He was gone for about six weeks: the majority of the holidays. He was excited to have some independence out there with his brother, far from parental supervision. I missed him terribly. It just wasn’t the same without him. My partner in crime was gone, and I was lonely.
We wrote back and forth. I’ll never forget the day my first letter from Bob arrived in the mail. My mom came into my room excited that my letter from Bob had come. I could have cried, I missed him so much. His letter did not disappoint. It was loaded with drawings and stories, and I read it over and over. It helped alleviate the pain. I wrote back immediately of course. I think I wrote my letter on the family computer. Bob wanted one so badly. In his letter, he said “When I come back, I’m getting a computer and a dog.” My parents laughed at that. They knew there was no way his parents would agree to a dog! Bob was showing that independent streak that he was picking up.
I was counting the days until he came home. We had so much to discuss. Bob had missed six weeks of WWF wrestling! There were heel turns he knew nothing about. I had new music to show him on my VHS collection. Most seriously though, I was weeks away from starting high school. Bob was going to show me the ropes and help me buy school supplies. He knew exactly what I’d need and what to be prepared for. While I was excited to start highschool, far from the Catholic school bullies that tormented me for eight years, I was also extremely anxious. I didn’t know the building and I had heard about hazing “niners”. I needed reassurance.
One day in mid-August, Bob came home.
I gave him some time…a little bit…to settle back in. Then I raced over and rang that doorbell. His mom always greeted me with a warm smile. Bob had great parents: Tina and John. They treated us so well. I can still see his mom’s smile and hear her voice, every time she greeted us at the door. Then Bob came downstairs. We didn’t hug or shake hands. Kids didn’t do that back then.
“HEY!” I said.
“HEY!” he returned. Simple as that.
We went out on the back porch, and talked and talked and talked. There was show and tell, gifts, and stories. Importantly, Bob had returned with Kiss.
The vinyl copy of Killers that he brought home with him is the very copy I own today. I think he also arrived with Kiss Alive II on cassette. I taped both immediately! Taping Kiss records from Bob meant I didn’t have to tape them off creepy George next door. There were a few songs we were quickly obsessed with: “All American Man”, “I’m A Legend Tonight”, and “Nowhere To Run”.
Bob also brought home for me an unusual gift: a defused hand grenade! Imagine putting that in your luggage today. I don’t know what happened to it. I should still have it in a box of stuff in storage somewhere. It was hollow inside, but heavy as hell! I played with it so much I eventually broke the pin off.
It wasn’t a long visit. Bob promised to help me with school supplies before the end of the summer, and he was true to his word. I knew he’d also shield me from anyone looking to haze a “niner”. I just couldn’t wait to get back at it with him: drawing, creating, listening to music, watching wrestling, and raising havok everywhere we went. It had been a quiet summer, spent collecting GI Joe and Transformers figures, and playing with them in the yard by myself. But now…the kids were back.
When summer turns to fall at the lake, there is a constant roar. It is always there. It is a mixture of a churning lake only meters away, dulled by the branches of the evergreens, but amplified by the wind. The wind is steady now, always pushing us towards fall.
When we arrived on Thursday night, the weather hadn’t turned foul yet. It was still warm, and the wind was tame enough to fly. I took the drone up for its first lake flight in a month. We haven’t been here for a long time. And now, it’s time to wind things down. No more stocking up on food and games for the season. Instead we are faced with a full freezer needing consumption, and a shelf of Uno variants that we just never got around to.
Models kits unbuilt. ZZ Top’s Eliminator, and a gold C-3P0. Never got to ’em this year. And now there’s no time for it this year. Next year, maybe.
We drove up to the sounds of Triumph Stages, a cottage classic. It took us almost the whole way. When here, we played ELP’s Brain Salad Surgery for research purposes. Opinions were mixed. More on that another time.
My usual routine involves setting up on the porch with my speakers and some music. It’s getting darker sooner, and this was probably the last weekend of the year for that routine.
I don’t remember the photo session, but I remember the picture clearly. My red, white and black shirt is what I recall the most easily about this picture. I couldn’t remember my age or what I looked like in the photo, but I remember that shirt. This portrait was on display at my parents’ house for many years, along with others depicting my sister and I as children.
When I saw this picture again, for the first time in probably decades, I was shocked. I looked into my own face and I read my own mind.
I still make that face. know every angle of the eyes and the curvature of the mouth. I am intimately familiar with that face. It is the face of anxiety and fear. If you have ever seen me make that face, it wasn’t a good day.
You can’t blame my parents. Back then, nobody knew any better. Baby was crying, baby didn’t want his photo taken. So you ignored the crying, you sat the baby down, and you let the photographer take the photo. There were going to be lots more photos. He’d better get used to this.
I look at the picture and I don’t see a baby crying for his first portrait. I see the fear and the need to be understood. I was always “shy” around strangers. You can imagine how I felt, with this strange photographer and in this weird place with a shag carpet beneath me and a dreary grey background. My parents were probably frustrated that they were paying for this photo, and this baby keeps crying. I can read that face. It’s the face that says, “I’m in distress here and why isn’t anybody listening to me?”
My whole life, I have felt like people don’t listen to me. They either don’t understand what I’m trying to convey or they just won’t listen. I have had dreams about this going back to when I was a kid. Trying to tell people what I’m feeling or what I need, and being dismissed. Eventually the frustration at not being understood boils over to screaming. To me, there is nothing worse than not being heard. To this day, sometimes the only person who understands what I’m saying and feeling is Jen.
In this picture, I see a need. I clearly wanted the hell out of there, and back home where felt safe and sound. I needed someone to hug me, tell me it was alright, and it will be over in just a minute. I needed someone to touch me and say, “I know you’re scared, this is all new to you. I know that camera and all that stuff looks scary. I know that person is a stranger, but if you need me I’m right here and I won’t let anything happen to you.” I needed that time being reassured. I can see it in my face. It’s as clear as words on paper.
This picture makes me feel a lot of things. I see my entire future laid about before me. So many fears. Going to school, learning to drive, living alone…that’s the face of someone who doesn’t want those things. He wants to stay home with his mom and dad, where he would be safe and surrounded only by familiar things and people who love him. This is the face of someone who is so uncomfortable that he is questioning why mom and dad are doing this to him. This is the face of someone who feels utterly alone inside.
It was over in minutes and forgotten, but I can’t help but feel that seeds were being sown.
There’s nobody to blame. Nobody knew any better. I couldn’t even talk, let alone understand all this terror I was feeling. I couldn’t have said “That person is a stranger and something about them is bothering me, I don’t know what those things are, I don’t like being up on this table covered with a shag carpet, and can someone please just tell me what is happening right now?” All I could do was cry.
I hate being this way. I hate the constant anxiety that nibbles away at me every day. I hate the feeling of not being understood. It’s amazing to think that I can see all this in my baby picture.
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