Legacy Writing 365:33

I could swear I posted this story on my blog before, but a search has turned up nothing. One time my parents spent a vacation at Callaway Gardens. In order not to have to endure the bored and surly teenager forced to go with them, they let me invite Lynne to join us. This was GENIUS, as it meant they got to see all the flowers and crap they wanted to while Lynne and I swam, hung out, found boys to flirt with, etc.

We made only one mistake.

We remembered to take a cassette player along with us so we’d have music. But we failed to pack any tapes. Therefore, all we had was the tape that was already in the player. I was reminded of this by an episode of 30 Rock that Tim and I watched last night.

Here’s a really crappy picture my mother took of Lynne and me that week. Photoshopping has actually enabled me to see things I can’t see on the original photo, like the embroidery Lynne did on her work shirt (our term for chambray shirts–those suckers are expensive as hell now; who works in them?), the way I’m holding my sunglasses in my hand instead of wearing them (I still do this), and the flowered shirt I’m wearing over my knit shirt. That flowered shirt belonged to Lynne’s Cousin George. She stole it from him. In an act of karmic retribution, I stole it from her. I don’t think anyone stole it from me. I think it fell apart from over-wearing and over-washing. I loved that shirt.

If you want to see a better picture from that vacation, I put one on my blog in 2007 in Lynne’s birthday post.

(Dear Jim: I’m pretty sure my mother must have said something like, “Why don’t you ever smile?” before she took this photo.)

Oh, yeah. The tape was Aqualung. I never wanted to hear it again after that vacation, although I did force myself to go to a Jethro Tull concert a few years later.