40 Days until 40: Day 14, 1988

January 10th, 2015 · No Comments

1988

This photo comes from a roll with an assortment of photos of and by my friend Paul, my best friend in the seventh grade. It doesn’t look like much, but the fact that my t-shirt has some neon colors and a logo on it (I never thought about it, but did this shirt, with its logo for the Coors Classic bike race, violate some rule about alcohol-related t-shirts? Wasn’t that a thing?) as a big step for me.

This was about the time I got heavily into t-shirts from T & C Surf Design, Ocean Pacific, and other other companies that couldn’t have had anything less to do with a kid from Alaska who hated swimming.

It was a weird time. This photo seems ordinary, but to me, it not only shows what I looked like at age 13, with those awful “clear” braces I had that just turned yellow – thanks, Dr. Day – but that I had a camera, a friend to goof around with, and the (misguided and strange) beginnings of a sense of personal style besides whatever school clothes my mom bought for me at the beginning of each year.

Tags: Alaska · Nostalgia · Photos · Projects