When I was eight years old, Mom shocked me by snapping a photo of me with her little Kodak camera — while I was sitting naked in the bathtub.
Keep in mind that this was in the mid-1950s, when snapping a photo was a big deal that required loading film into a camera, screwing on a single-use flashbulb, driving to a photo shop to have the film developed, and going back a week later to pick up the prints. It was faster to make a Thanksgiving turkey than a photo. I don’t think more than a dozen snapshots of me were taken before I entered high school.
And one of them was a full-frontal shot of me sitting in a bathtub, naked as a Thanksgiving turkey. But skinnier. With a deer-in-the-flashbulb look in my eyes.
That photo became the bane of my childhood, because Mom cherished it. What mother wouldn’t cherish the sight of her darling boy, frozen nakedly for all time in a world with so few ways to freeze elusive time?
And what eight-year-old boy wouldn’t shudder at the thought of being frozen naked for all time in a photo that his mom wouldn’t let him destroy?
To be fair to Mom, I was sitting in murky, waist-deep, eight-year-old-boy bathwater, so there wasn’t much of my “giblets” to see in the photo. Yeah, that’s why there wasn’t much to see. Let’s stick with that.
But still, I was bare-butt naked. In a photo. Forever.
As I grew older and bolder, I threatened often to find the photo and tear it to shreds, but I never did. When I was a high-school senior, arguing with Mom and Dad over my prom-night curfew, Mom threatened to show the photo to Mary Jo, my date for the night. The thought horrified me, because if there was going to be any grand giblet-show that night, I didn’t want it to be in the form of a little black-and-white photo.
I was home fifteen minutes before curfew. The giblets remained un-revealed, photographically or otherwise.
I think of that photo every time I hear people talk about how hard it is for kids today to grow up in a cellphone social-media world, where it’s so easy for a kid to snap a shot of his (or her) giblets and post it for all the world to see. You never know where a shot like that will end up, or for how long, just waiting to pop up when the job interview is over and your boss-to-be decides to hop online to find what else there is to see about you.
And every time I hear a modern-day sexting horror story, of some innocent kid who snapped a giblet-shot to share with one person that ended up plastered all over the Internet, I wonder: “Who are these people?” I would never have been such a boundary-crossing rebel at that age. When I was that age, a lot of stupid things seemed like a good idea to do, but a power-point giblet show was never one of them.
It was bad enough having to live through that mid-century “social media” known as the clothesline. Every laundry day during my pre-teen years, I was horrified knowing that my undies hung out there on the line for all the world to see. Oh, sure, it was thrilling to look over the fence and see Beverly’s or Cathy’s little pink bras hanging on the line, but it was unbearable to think they could look over the fence just as easily at my U-trou on the line. I would rather have bypassed the clothesline and worn my skivvies soggy, but Mom wouldn’t allow it. Besides, she had that cursed snapshot to hold over my head if I ever tried a trick like that.
Oh, if I could ever get my hands on that photo, it would be gone, gone, gone.
Mom has been gone for eight years now, and I never knew what became of that old photo.
But just this morning, as I was cleaning out an old dresser drawer filled with useless junk, I found that little black-and-white snapshot. Mom must have given it to my wife sometime during our long marriage — a passing-on of the maternal leash? But surely the gift would have come with a caution: Don’t show him where you keep it, or he’ll rip it to shreds.
In the meantime, my wife learned other ways to keep me in line without having to resort to the nuclear option. And so that photo sat quietly hidden in that neglected drawer for who knows how many years.
But now, at long last, that despicable photo was mine! I could tear it to shreds, and who could stop me?
In fact, it’s my obligation to do so, isn’t it? After all, times have changed from the mid-1950s. This is the 21st century, a contradictory world in which rebellious little boundary-crossers can snap giblet-shots at will and send them out for all the world to see — and yet adults may be prosecuted if they own giblet-y photos of eight-year-old boys, even if they themselves are the little naked boy in the shot.
My duty was clear: I must destroy it, send it to oblivion once and for all. Just rip it down the middle, right down the deer-eyed face of that innocent little skinny boy staring up in surprise from the murky water of that old claw-foot tub.
But…
Mom made that photo.
And she kept it.
And she passed it on so I could see through her eyes for a single flashing instant all these years later, even though her eyes are closed now forever. Now, when I look at that photo, I don’t see me. I see her.
The snapshot is back in that junk drawer now, where it will stay.
So, I guess I’m a boundary-crossing rebel after all. Go figure.
Author, musician and storyteller TR Kerth is a retired teacher who has lived in Sun City Huntley since 2003. Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com. Can’t wait for your next visit to Planet Kerth? Then get TR’s book, “Revenge of the Sardines,” available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online book distributors.
