Pictures

Last night I was dusting the bookshelves at home and I came across an old photo album. I have dozens of photo albums/scrapbooks that I've been creating since middle school. The earlier albums have photos of high school parties and sleepovers mostly. The more recent albums have pictures from weddings we've attended, vacations and a surprising number of those photo holiday cards. I suppose the transition of photo album content is yet another sign that I am, in fact, no longer a kid.

The album I looked through last night was from the summer between my sophomore and junior years of college. I think that was one of my most adventurous times ever. I moved to Colorado Springs for the summer and lived in a house with two strangers. How we all ended up in that house, I don't even remember. I do remember the address: 217 E. Uintah. And the outside of the house was pale yellow. I had a couple friends from high school living in Colorado Springs at the time and some of my friends came for a visit one weekend, but otherwise, I was really on my own in a new city. I ended up becoming good friends with one roommate and just being amused by the other and overall, the summer was really amazing. I was falling in love with Neil even though he was in Yakima, Washington, and I was feeling really independent. Anyways, looking at the pictures last night was really strange. While I recognized that the smiling girl in them with the curly hair was me, I looked a little unfamiliar at the same time. I am not sure how to describe it better than that. It was one of the first times I've looked at photos of myself and realized that when they were taken, I was really somebody else -- a very different version of myself. And that realization was at once exciting and a little bit creepy. What it comes down to is that while I really like the current me, I kinda miss that girl in the photos.

Update

After I wrote yesterday's post, a couple commenters suggested I stop and find out what the shiny squares were just so that I could report back. When I went to lunch, I planned to do just that but amazingly, somebody had stopped and picked them all up between my morning commute and lunch. I have no clue what they were, but now that I can't find out, I have decided that it's better not to know. They probably would have ended up being something far less exciting than condoms, right?

Doogie Howser, M.D.

When I was little, my first crush on a human being (the real first crush was on He Man, but he was a cartoon) was on Doogie Howser. I was ten years old when the TV show started and Doogie was, by far, the cutest boy I had ever seen -- plus, he was really smart. I watched the show obsessively and made my parents tape it frequently. I also wrote Neil Patrick Harris a couple of fan letters, which, looking back, were probably terrifying to him. He sent me two post cards with his photo on the front and autograph on the back and I was insulted. Sometime during the show's run, there was a celebrity skiing event for charity at the Santa Fe Ski Area. Neil Patrick Harris, because he was from Albuquerque, attended two years in a row and both years, I was up skiing and got his autograph. I believe it was the second year when I got the nerve to talk to him beyond asking for his autograph and said, "I'm your hugest fan!" and then realized instantly that hugest is not, in fact, a word and turned bright red with humiliation. I knew at that moment, and for the first time, that being Doogie Howser's girlfriend was probably not in the cards for me.

Last weekend, while browsing at Target I came upon a rather remarkable item, Season One of Doogie Howser, M.D. on DVD. I was on the phone with Rachel at the time and she tried to help me avoid the monster of impulse purchasing, but only minutes later I was the proud owner of Season One of Doogie Howser, M.D. This week, I have been watching a couple episodes a night and am surprised by how good the show really is. I still love it even though Doogie now looks like a tiny little kid and I am in love with a different Neil. I love the fact that they're putting old TV shows on DVD now and that I get to own (and revisit) a little bit of my childhood.