On Turkeys and Babies

I was talking to my friend Jmaie Dnrunig (real name has been google-proofed!), who has one of those names where you say the full first & last name every time you talk about her. (To Jaime: Relax, I'm not really talking about you. I can hear you now: "What the hell does that mean?") But you know, you just have some friends where the full name just comes out as if it were one word. I usually do it for alliterative names, like MikeMarshall the carpet guy, or MollyMitchell my camp friend. I really even say things like, "Hi MikeMarshall, how are you?" or "Oh my god, MollyMitchell, I love those shoes." (Bad example, I would never comment on someone's shoes.) It sounds normal until I picture hearing my own name being used as a full name in a sentence. For the folks at home, try it now with your own name. Weird, right?

ANYWAY.... I was talking to my friend Jmaie Dnrunig and I was telling her that everyone has such cute kids, hers included, and that I was such an ugly baby when I was little. She didn't believe me, so I said fuck it, I'll blog about it! My mom kept a 5x7 baby picture of me on her fridge a few years ago, and one of her good friends who has known us forever looked at the picture and said in a whisper, "Oh god, whose baby is this? It's so ugly!" And my mom just laughed and laughed and pointed at me.

This wasn't the exact picture that was on the fridge, but it was from the same series at least.


I'm the one on the left that looks like:
a) a drunk old man
b) a treasure troll
c) a raisin with a toupee
d) I'm open to your ideas on this one

Notice how I'm holding myself up with a fist and my double chin. Sometimes I wonder if this is what I look like when I sit at my desk for too long.

This next picture is from a bit later, but clearly I had not outgrown my ugly phase.


Now I think I look more like Dana Carvey than a treasure troll or a raisin, but the resemblance is still there. As I got older, I got a little bit cuter but a lot more dorky. I never really noticed how dorky I was because I was too focused on the fact that my sister looked like a 50 year old lesbian accountant in the 2nd grade.



And eventually, I ended up looking like this:



What a turkey! Speaking of turkeys, when I was in 9th grade, JmaieDrunig gave me the nickname "Turk" which I had embroidered on the arm of my softball sweatshirt. The nickname came from a story I wrote in elementary school that was published in the school newspaper, called "What I'd do if I were a turkey." And whaddya know, here it is: