Foto Fridays are Flippin' Fantastic!

This photo is one of my favorites. It pictures the author as a young child, weeping while dressed as a Dutch peasant. This was taken in May of 1979, when I was 18 months old.

For the sake of comparison, here's a picture of Charlotte at the same age:

Here, she is weeping not because she's been costumed as an impoverished 19th-century European, but because her mother, who up to that moment had been fairly loving, kind, and protective, brought her to a shopping mall and handed her over to a stranger with a puffy white beard and a bizzare coat-and-hat ensemble, a stranger who was so dedicated to his craft that he stayed in character, jovially bellowing HO HO HO in spite of the despondent wails of the tiny blonde person on his lap.

I will pay you $10 to diagram that sentence.

So, what have we learned today? First, weeping when being made a spectacle of runs in the family. I can't wait to humiliate Sam! Second, I can't help but notice a more than passing resemblance between my daughter and I. Hmm. And finally, and most importantly, mothers are not to be trusted, especially when they are wielding a camera.