I'm sitting in front of the fireplace in our den. I'm guessing it's autumn from the items on the mantle, but that's like me to be barefoot at that time of year in southeastern Pennsylvania even so. The sweatshirt I'm wearing has the image of Winnie the Pooh eating honey. That sweatshirt was my favorite item of clothing and I wore it constantly enough that it would go long periods of time without being washed.
I wasn't a big Winnie the Pooh fan. I still haven't read any of the books. I think the sweatshirt just offered me a kind of baggy security that I wanted. I couldn't have worn it to school, though, as my school, an all-boys college preparatory one, had a strict dress code even in the lower grades.
The photo is in bad shape but I like it. I'm genuinely happy in it and, being a few years off from hitting my moody adolescence, it's one of the few photographs I have of myself in which my happiness shows. I'm pretty sure my mother took the picture with, probably, a Kodak Instamatic camera.
