1990
Place: Raymond, AlbertaMy age: 12
From left to right, that's Rob, Dad, and me. No, we aren't napping together on Mum and Dad's bed. The newspaper is on the floor, and we're all reading it. Rob and Dad did this a lot, and I joined them just because I liked to feel like one of the men. Rob was a young adult by this time, and I was just revving up for puberty, and I sometimes felt left out of the manly things in my female-dominated family.
1991
Place: Lethbridge, AlbertaMy age: 13
This is me and Mum at our ward Christmas party. It's not the most interesting photo I found from '91 (I had some amusing Tae Kwon Do photos), but it's the one I like the best. It's a good picture of me. I'm actually smiling. Maybe it's just my knowledge of what was going on at the time, but I think you can see sadness in my eyes. I was going through hell at school. I really like this picture of Mum, too. You can tell just looking at her that she loves me very much.
1992
Place: Edmonton, AlbertaMy age: 14
This is my favourite junior high school picture. I need a haircut (or at the very least, I need to start parting my hair in the middle like I started doing a few years later), but I look good otherwise. I was happier in Edmonton than I had been in Lethbridge, but I was also at my most shy as a result of what happened in the eighth grade. And I'm also noticing, just this moment, that when I smile, my right eye is open a little wider than my left eye.
1993
Place: Prince George, British ColumbiaMy age: 15
Sorry. This was the only picture from 1993 that I could find in my photo album. It's the house my family lived in on Merton Crescent in Prince George. I also apologize for how off-center it is. nice house, though. Shoveling the driveway was a bitch.
1994
Place: somewhere in the Northwest TerritoriesMy age: 16
I always laugh at these pictures. Sara, Mary, Rachel, Noah, and I were spending the summer in High Level, Alberta, which is where my father works. We decided to drive up to the Northwest Territories. A few miles north of the border, we suffered a flat tire. Not a huge problem, we thought. Duane Oler had taught Rachel, Noah, and I how to change a flat tire mere months ago. But then we ran into a problem: we couldn't get the jack out of the trunk. It was fit snugly into a bracket in the side of the trunk. No matter how much we yanked on it, we couldn't get it to come out. The girls decided to walk back to the information centre at the border for help while Noah and I stayed with the car. As soon as the girls were out of sight, a thought struck me: lower the jack. I stood up, went to the trunk, turned the jack turnie-thingie counterclockwise, and it fell out of the bracket. I set to work to get the tire changed, when I noticed another problem: there weren't any tools besides the jack itself. Thankfully, the girls showed up a few minutes later with some guys who were better equipped, and we were soon driving back to High Level.
1995
Place: Raymond, AlbertaMy age: 17
That's me in the chair, Neil Oler behind me, and Rachel's butt to the left. This was a week or so after Halloween. There was only crappy candy left. Some of the other kids decided it would be fun to see how many Rockets (Smarties to any Americans who may be reading) they could fit in their mouths at once. They didn't leave much for me, so I decided to see how many lemon-flavoured Starburst (the worst flavour, by the way) I could fit in my mouth. 21.
1996
Place: Raymond, AlbertaMy age: 18
I won't say much about this one, because I plan on devoting an entire post to my high school graduation. This is me and Jake at prom with a plastic monstrosity of a horse pulling a crappy-looking chariot. I'm not going bald yet, but my hair is thinner than it was in high school. I'll often look back on it with fondness, except for when I'm looking at pictures like this. No matter how much I combed, no matter how much mousse or gel I used, I had those wings of hair fanning out on either side of my head. At least I don't have a goofy smile.
1997
Place: St. Albert, AlbertaMy age: 19
This was immediately after coming home from California with Sara. On the second last day of our stay there, we went to Huntington Beach. Despite Dad's earnest warnings (he served his mission is southern California), we didn't use sunblock while lying on the beach. I burned pretty badly. I was in extreme pain as Sara and I made our way through various airports on the way home (Mum, Dad, Mary, and Emily were driving home), and I had to work a full shift at work the day after getting home. When I got home and changed out of my Soda Jerks uniform, I almost fainted when I saw a golf ball-sized blister on each leg. Sara took me to a health clinic, where they slathered me up with lotion and bandaged me up. But my arms and face are nicely tanned.
1998
Place: St. Albert, AlbertaMy age: 20
It would have been easy to go with a Missionary Training Center picture here, but I decided to go with this one instead. It's me with my paternal grandmother, Thelma MacKenzie. I chose it because I don't have a lot of pictures of just the two of us together. In fact, I can't think of any others besides this one. Too bad there's that dark spot shadowing her. This was the day of my mission farewell/Thanksgiving dinner. We had an interesting relationship. We loved each other very much, but our conversations were very one-sided since only one of us could hear. She wasn't completely deaf (just the natural loss of hearing that comes with aging), but the pitch of my voice, even when I raised it, was perfectly in the range of sound she had a hard time hearing.
1999
Place: Dulag, Leyte, PhilippinesMy age: 21
This is one of my favourite mission photos. For one thing, I hadn't been so thin since I was 15, and I haven't been close to that thin since I got back to Canada. For another thing, look at those ugly decorations. This was at the house of a woman we taught and baptized. Her family had an ugly rug with those same dogs who are usually playing poker, and the ugliest fish carving I've ever seen. I needed to get them on film.
