Our young old souls

A side benefit of cleaning out the pantry and cellar was unearthing a cheap film scanner that had gone missing. I’d turned rooms and closets upside down trying to find it and gave up long ago, wanting it desperately to scan negatives from a photography class in 1992.

There’s a void between the heyday of film cameras in the 70s, point and shoots of the 80s and affordable digital cameras of the late 90s. Inside this gap are my middle school, high school and college years — all largely undocumented.

For the most part I’m glad this awkward phase is left to memory. (Though I do wish I had a photograph of me wearing those parachute pants mom made by hand in 1982 and the awful body wave of ’84.)

I fed a strip of negatives into the scanner and there was me and my friend Jenn, all fresh faced, fired up about the world and possibility. (We still are.)

“I have no idea what look I was going for.” she replied when I texted the images over.

Clearly we were into layers.

My college friends remember me as the character in that last photo. Skinny and tall, oversized corduroy jacked (I felt it made me look collegiate), and riding a bike everywhere because I didn’t have a car.

I was figuring out who I was. (Still am!)

I like to think my young old soul would be okay with the older young soul I like to think I turned out to be.