I found old photographs in the attic today. I rifled through—literally—thousands of old Polaroids of me naked.
Most were infant pictures of me. I was a fat baby. People were actually concerned about me as a newborn. “Have you seen Sue’s baby?” people would say. Then they would inflate their cheeks.
My hair was the color of a carrot. My belly looked like a No. 9 bowling ball.
In one photo, I was taking a bath in the kitchen sink. My parents made no attempt to hide my little butt from the camera. In fact, I found many pictures wherein my hindquarters were the focal point.
My mother took these pictures.
I know this because my mother was obsessed with my butt. She was always showing these pictures to company when I was a kid.
“Can I refill your tea?” my mother would ask people in our parlor. “Would you like to see my son’s butt?”
There are various photographs of me standing by the fireplace, my rear facing the camera. In these pictures I’m
wearing a ten-gallon hat, holding a little pistol. I am 3 years old, and my unmentionables are showing.
My mother would show these pictures to visitors and say, “Sean was very chilly that day.”
There are photos from my first day of school. I was holding a huge sack lunch in a supermarket paper bag. All my classmates held Evel Knievel lunch boxes, or Charlie’s Angels pales. Whereas my paper bag was large enough to feed a family of eight.
I can only guess that the supermarket bag was a result of miserly parents.
My parents were extremely frugal. My mother was Scottish, my father was German. Legend has it that on their first date, my father did not bring a bouquet, but a packet of carnation seeds. I can specifically remember my mother used to meet pizza delivery men halfway.
My mother used to…