Sunday is my birthday. I will be thirty-eight years old.
"Wow, ManagerMom!" People never say to me. "At 38, you're quite the cougar MILF! Have you always been this stunning?"
To answer this question, I bring you portraits from the first eighteen years of my life, which my own mother faithfully saved in an 8 x 10 picture frame in our living room: 
Having seen some of my fellow bloggers on Fug Mug Friday over at PapaTV I don't feel quite so bad.
On the other hand, there's still the adolescent years. I'll save those for tomorrow.
Friday, September 12, 2008
Manager Mom's Gallery of Shame: Part 1: The Grade School Years
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61 comments:
No no no - not ugly. You were a cute kid and you grew to be a beautiful woman.
I'm 42 (you can now pretend to be shocked) and I have no younger siblings. I've always imagined that I had the short end of the 70s clothing stick, and that all who came after me had vastly improved wardrobes.
Maybe, just maybe, I was wrong.
You were not by any means one of the ugliest kids on the planet. Please! And as to your birthday- my forties were my best and favorite decade. Honestly and seriously. So the good times don't even start for you for two years.
Enjoy your youth, look forward to the best parts. That sounds all cliche-y and crap, but I'm telling you the truth.
Those outfits really brought me back in time. Your mom is an awesome seamstress, by the way.
Oh these are too cute! I like the secretary photo best! Happy Birthday (I may say it again tomorrow and Sunday)!
OMG - I should post my first grade photo - the clothes, the haircut, it's like we were twins. Good to know people all over the country dressed their kids in ugly tablecloths.
Happy Birthday!!!!
Little did you realize the cougar that you would soon be.
Happy early birthday! You'll always be younger than me, so sorry if I'm a little short on the sympathy. I'm also a little short, period ... but I digress.
I followed the Mugly post from Twitter and was able to pick you out even before I read this post, so I'm patting myself on the back today.
I also share the pain of parental haircuts. My 2nd grade picture shows bangs so crooked that my mother must have used pinking shears to do them. In 7th grade we went in for my first professional haircut, and the hairdresser said "WHO did this to YOU?" My mother hid in the waiting room until I was done.
My god, I hated those reflection pictures! I have one just like that but I'm wearing a pink, faux silk shirt ala Denny Terrio. Gotta love those 70s pics -
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
You know that expression, "her face could stop a clock"? Does that mean someone is hot or ugly? Or is it ambiguous? Does it apply to digital as well as analog?
Regardless, it is clear you were a true child of the '70s.
Such great pictures! I don't think anyone looked good in the 1970s - all that polyester and the colors!!! I hate to think what synthetically garbed delights I could dig up of myself...shudder.
Happy Birthday!!!
The McCall's pattern The Liberace!!!! I howled. (and I'm at work damn it)
Happy Birthday you MILF! Mine's the 20th - I'd do a pictorial, however I am the middle child and only have one or two childhood photo's. My babybook only has my name written in it.
Can't wait to see your teen years and read your descriptions of them!
No way were you the ugliest kid... but DUDE.... you did have the worst shirts. I am LMMFAO @ the shirts. Especially the first one. OMG. AWHHAHAHAHHAHHAAAA!!!!!!!
xoxo
I know you don't want to hear this, but that first photo looks eerily like the little boy who lives next door to me, like really eerie.
Oy vey. I have all the same backdrops and poses...the harshness of our generation!
My mom cut my hair too. I had the fashionable early 80s bowl cut. I kind of looked like a blonde Beatle.
I think it's an adorable picture!!! I had absolutely no hair until I was 2, and then it grew in reddish and curly- my aunt nicknamed me "Lucy". I'm still not speaking to her.;)
I think you are my sister. Or our moms had access to the same McCalls patterns. I am not laughing AT you. With you.
No ugly there, just some misguided fashions and mom-ness. Your mom is lucky you didn't take flight on the way to the photo sitting with that collar when you were three.
In my fifth grade picture, I look like I'm taking a piss.
I don't really know what else to say.
Holy cow - are we related? I swear I had the same clothes and hair styles!!
every year on the holidays my grandma switched out our 8 1/2 x 11pictures on her fireplace mantel. how many people visited her home and thought he's STILL in braces...hasn't it been like 5 years? Poor kid. Oh, he's IN high school?" Poor, poor kid.
HAHA Um you poor thing. You were just the poor victim of bad clothes. You always looked cute. And you're a total MILF now!
Love the tuxedo blouse! Ha!
Sorry...your too cute!
Not ugly!
Happy Birthday
It seems like you grew up in the shadow of the Laura Ingalls Wilder craze. Still damn cute, though.
You ARE Danny Bonaducci's sister!
Kidding:) I couldn't resist!
And ... do you know that natural redheads are the smartest of all hair colors????
hahaha! I forgot all about that double view thing. I'm glad I dodged that bullet, but plenty of my classmates did not.
Happy Birthday...
I hated school pictures...eventaully we got to wear our "uniforms"..so my clothes weren't that dumb for a while.
8th grade..I wore white.. OMG I looked horrible..
Happy Birthday Weekend, Manager Mom!
I love this photo post. Your comments are as witty as evah! And the photos are adorable! Seriously. How cute is it to look back on childhood photos... the wardrobe, the hair?! Love it.
I love it. Can't wait for the rest of them.
Happy early birthday!
That is so cool. You are brave. I can wait to laugh at, I mean see the rest tomorrow.
Are you still a red head? I didn't know that!
Holy Moses Suze Orman would kill your 3-year-old self for that amazing collar!!! These are priceless!! Happy early birthday! haha
I am in love with the 7 y/o secretarial look...coming to a Limited Too this fall?
Happy Birthday! And on this special day, perhaps focus on the amazing (in my mind) fact that a) your mother made sure you had a portrait taken EVERY year and b) she SEWED your clothes! Now that's dedication. My mother didn't own a needle, or (apparently) a camera...
And you look very cute. :)
Could you kill me MORE dead with the Doug Henning shout-out!? OMG. I may have peed a little bit. Because I am 40 and have lost a portion of my bladder control with age. I fear telling you what the McCall's pattern love did to me, because I want to hold onto the dream that you and I could be an all-powerful, crime-fighting MILF team!
Happy birthday!
Seriously... those are sweet pictures. You have not seen mine.
Happy birthday sweet Manager Mom!!!!
Happy almost Birthday!
And what cute pictures ... not ugly ones!
Mine are similar. I blame the bangs on my grandmother's obsessive need to trim my hair every time she saw me, but I think my mom had that same McCall's pattern, oy vey.
Happy Birthday!
Happy Birthday!!!
Hope you do something fabulous.
Your pictures are cute! What are you talking about????
Timi
Happy Birthday!
Gee, why don't we do the floating head Olen Mills photo anymore?!
Ohhh happy birthday! You are still young.....I feel so much older! *sob* Have a great day!
I looked a lot like you as a kid actually...
Being a MILF makes up for it though doesn't it?
;)
You were just too cute. The shirts were tragic.
okaaaay..it's tomorrow. where are the adolescent photos? happy birthday!!
oh my gosh. I have pictures just like those. I even think my mom used the same McCall's Liberace pattern, too. What were our parents thinking? I mean seriously? Good lord the seventies were so wayward and misguided. Sheesh.
Happy Birthday, You absolutely gorgeous creature, you.
Oh, you were adorable! Yes, maybe your mom could have cut a better fringe across your forehead, but those were the days. I suffered a similar fate.
Happy Birthday!!
Happy Birthday-- boy do I love those old little baby dresses.
happy birthday! And thank you for the comfort of letting me know I wasn't the only child who suffered the fate of bad haircuts from Mom's who should not be allowed to weild scissors and dressed us like dorks.
Oh my goodness!!! I'm still laughing!! no...not AT you, my dear, but WITH you....Personally, my favorite are the green tights that you wore for the 4 year-old picture....it's the shirt, the tights, the "on man, I am gonna BE somebody someday" look about you!! (either that, or it's the "take the damn picture I have to go pee" look....it's debatable!!)
Darling...just darling!
and happy birthday!! hope it's a good one!!
deb.
Those are awesome!
In seeing how many professional portraits your parents had done of you, it is now clear that my parents did not love me.
Love the Pics! I can relate to those great home haircuts and oh too cool shirts/dresses. Why is it that mom's had to cut our bangs and inch from our scalps?
And thank goodness for the mass ruffles they insisted on inflicting on us or we may just have been mistaken for boys!
HAVE A GREAT BIRTHDAY!!
Happy Birthday! I'm 39 and have the same kind of pictures!
These are fantastic! I can only imagine how strange our kids' school pictures will look in 30 years. Happy Birthday.
Happy, Happy Birthday Manager Mom!!
Birthdays are good for you. The more you have, the longer you live.
You're just now getting to the good years. Enjoy them!!
Hugs!!
Your childhood clothes and mine were apparently separated at birth.
Happy birthday!!
Talk to the HAND! You're adorable! And Happy Birthday!
MLF!
Cougar!
You are so funny!
Cougar?!?!?!
I have only heard that from hubby in reference to the women at work... I am adopting that word now! Not for me though, of course, I am still clearly in Milf standing ;)!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! Im right behind you (well, in April), but no one would render me MILF'ish.
And no, that does not look like a boy in a dress!
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