Do you remember wearing a diaper?
Well, you did, you did, and you looked good in it, too. You crawled around hallways, yanked the dog’s tail, and screamed like a banshee in that diaper-padded butt. Chances are good someone took pictures of you doing it. Chances are good the camera kept clicking through your grass-stain-and-pimple-filled childhood, too.
The evidence exists.
Coming across those old photos of your boyfriend or girlfriend these days is great … for a few big reasons:
1. Coloring in the lines. When you’re falling head over heels for somebody, you just can’t get enough of them. If you’ve ever said “I wish I knew you before!” or “Where have you been all my life?”, then old photos are your best way into their past.*
2. Awkwardness Anonymous. At the start of the relationship everyone’s on their best behavior. New pants, muted farts, and deodorant double-swiping is the norm. Which is why sharing old photos builds so much trust. We get to see into your geeky past, when metal mouths, Coke-bottle glasses, and gap-toothed grins were the norm.
3. They’re just plain ol’ cute. Because you were a chubby-cheeked one-year-old with wide eyes and a button nose at some point. We won’t ask what happened.
When you see those old photos of your boyfriend or girlfriend it’s like your pasts and your futures start slowly twisting together. Stories pop out of birthday cake blowouts, histories bloom out of family reunions, and long lives lived seem to fill in before your eyes as you finger flip through dog-eared albums on the old basement couch.
AWESOME!
(*Until the Holodeck gets invented.)
