No one likes sitting in trash cans

Because I am tired and I still haven't written anything for today, I thought I'd share some old pictures with you instead. Embarrassing for me, entertaining for you: win/win.

The moment this photo was taken has been ingrained in my memory as the moment I realized that on some level, parents don't care what their kids think. Especially if a parent gets it into their head that his kid is pretty cute, but would be WAY cuter, say, inside a trash can. I can distinctly remember the flash of inspiration crossing my dad's face, and my almost instantaneous grasping of the situation and adamant refusal to go along with his plan. I remember a momentary cajoling on my dad's part, a thin argument about how funny it would be if I were in the trash can. I would be like Oscar the Grouch. Again, I wasn't persuaded. But by this point, my dad was no longer listening to me and had decided that it would be much easier to just pick me up and put me in the trash can. Which is what he did. I voiced my protest the best I could:

Of course, it's sorta funny now, in retrospect, but there's still a part of me that remembers not wanting to be in the trash and being overruled. However, in my dad's defense, it wasn't outside my character to crawl into things with my head sticking out.

This last picture has nothing to do with being in any sort of container, unless the 80s count. I don't even think it was Halloween, but my friend had a costume party and I went as...whatever this was. A Cyndi Lauper somethingorother. I got to dye part of my hair pink, which was probably the coolest think I'd been allowed to do up to this point (this was approximately seven years before my mom would give me the silent treatment for dying a little braid underneath my hair blue with Manic Panic, no costume party involved). My friends at the party were also quite impressed, and I won the prize for best costume.

Also, that shirt was my mom's, though I don't remember her wearing it. It's like a wearable version of an Aha video. I can only hope my old clothes age half as awesomely as my parents' did.