Husband has only two pictures from his childhood, a common enough occurrence when you’re #4a out of 7 total. (Twins.) One is a blurry, one-by-two-inch black-and-white snapshot of a running toddler who could be any gender or ethnicity, really. We’re just taking his sisters’ word for it that it’s really him. The other is a school picture of Husband, clad in a garish plaid jacket, posed with his big giant head nearly obscuring the backdrop, a Colonial flag.
(Me: So there were only thirteen states in the Union when you were in elementary school? Husband: Actually, I was twelve in that picture. Me: Good lord, really?)
This photo hung on our refrigerator for a number of years, and the day we decided to adopt, I remember looking at it and thinking, thank God I won’t have to give birth to the simulacrum of that big giant head. I would love to post the photo here, but I can’t find it; I guess that means Husband only has ONE photo from him childhood.
Anyway, there are no photos, but there are movies. My father-in-law had a Super-8 camera, and soon after we were married, his sisters converted them to videotape and gave us a copy. By the time the boys were old enough to be curious about what Mommy and Daddy looked like as kids, though, videotape was obsolete, and that particular cassette was lost (a common theme in this household). This fall, my sister-in-law (#3b; yes, another set of twins) told us she could burn another copy onto a DVD for us. We were happy, but cautious; #3b has a sketchy track record with technology.
About a month later, the disc arrived. I put it into the computer, looking forward to showing the kids what infant Daddy looked like (”His head! It’s blocking out the sun!). The disc started up, and…
Porn. She’d sent us a porno.
Husband called her to ask, wtf? and she sounded truly bewildered when she asked, “How in the world did that happen?”
This sister-in-law is one-half of the team who sent us this.
She eventually sent us the correct DVD, another plain white unlabeled disc. Both the porno and the home movie are now lost; I can only hope a babysitter doesn’t pop the offensive one into the DVD player while looking for something to amuse the kiddies.