Here is my grade nine yearbook photo. In it I’m wearing my friend Andree’s sweater, which she loaned me. Isn’t it loontastic? She got it at Northern Reflections, which used to sell clothes that you could wear if you were under 60 years of age. My hair is cut the way my mom especially likes it. I think at this point I had finally figured out that if I parted my hair on the side it would hide my cowlicks. See how young and innocent and trusting I am? This was taken before I started working or dating or participating in any extra-curricular activities, which would later include yearbook, of course. In grade nine I lived with my brother, mom and her husband Larry on Fairleigh Avenue in Oshawa. My dad moved in with Heather the summer between grade nine and ten. When I was in grade nine, Graham had just graduated from that very same high school just before I got there, so we just missed one another, the first in a series of near-misses we had for many years before finally meeting online.
This photo was also included in our yearbook, on the yearbook staff page at the back. I’m sporting another spectacular Northern Reflections sweater. I had helped out a lot with the yearbook, and the people who were the actual important Yearbook Editors put this in as a little surprise for me. See how it says I was an Assistant Editor? That pleased me to no end.
