A picture is worth something or other

My dear friend K found some of my old photos the other day. She enjoyed them so much that she thought they should be shared with the world. She said they offered a unique glimpse into my past and would afford my readers a better understanding of me. Sounds like a fine idea to me so I said sure. And here they are...

Look at the baby! So cute! Hard to believe that the innocent little cherub in this photo would go on to become a mild-mannered boy from the Midwest that moved to Tampa and fell in with a crowd of sexy, fast talkin' city ladies who got his poor head all a-jumbled.

Awww! Baby bath in the sink! Classic! Doesn't that make you want to just pinch my buttcheeks? Well, good news; you still can! Just send me a self addressed stamped postcard explaining why I should let you pinch my buttcheeks and if you're a lucky winner, I'll let you do it! Or just come up to me and do it whenever you want. Either way is good.

Halloween was always a special time to show off just how gosh-darned cute I was.

Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me!

Ribbit! Ha ha! Froggy fun!

But hey, don't get the idea that my childhood was all bubble baths and cute costumes, because it wasn't, okay?

I had challenges to deal with...

...unique obstacles to overcome.

But who doesn't, right? I can't complain. Overall, it was a pretty great childhood. We had family pets...

This is Whiskers McPounce-A-Lot, my pet kitty cat. One day, men from the government showed up in a special van and asked my dad if he knew anything about a bunch of goats that had been slaughtered in the neighborhood. My dad talked to the men out in the garage where I couldn't hear them and right after that, Whiskers ran away from home. What a strange coincidence. We were sad, but dad cheered us up when he told us the government men had come to give us some money because they wanted us to go to Deer Forest on vacation that year!

This is Mr. Scribbles, our pet chimpanzee. Mr. Scribbles taught me the secret of how to throw really hard and really fast. But all the other kids in the neighborhood had a real problem with getting feces on their hands so nobody wanted me on their baseball teams.

By the time I was becoming a teenager, I had a reputation for being something of a fancy lad...

Something I carried with me into high school...

...and eventually, like many troubled teenagers, I got into some dark and disturbing occult stuff.

I grew out of it (thank goodness) but I was still subject to going along with the fads of the day...

In 1979, "10" with Bo Derek came out. My skin condition cleared up in time for 1980...

...when "Urban Cowboy" was all the rage.

High school was a formative time for me, as it is for everyone. But I didn't stop exploring new things, new ideas, new ways to express myself...

For a while, in the late '80s, I was the lead singer for a Tom Petty tribute band called "Petty Theft". We were sued out of existence on the grounds that we were (in the eyes of the law and a jury of our so-called peers, I guess) "godawful".

Then, of course you remember the year I spent defending the planet from aliens as Dynaman, right? Right? Oh, come on! Earth on the brink of being destroyed? All humans taken captive to serve as slave labor in the riboflavin mines on planet Hamnick-Yelkl? Nobody remembers any of that. Everybody remembers Mookie Wilson hitting a grounder that went between Bill Buckner's legs in game 6 of the '86 World Series but nobody ever seems to remember the whole year I spent defending the earth from aliens as Dynaman?!? Such bullshit from you people.

Anyway, here I am today, happy and relaxed in Florida with Rhonda, my personal assistant. Literally: this picture was taken today, right outside my corporate suite at Clark Brooks, LLC. Hmm, looks like Rhonda has been skipping too many meals. I think I'll tell her to whip up some pot roast and mashed potatoes for dinner tonight.

And what does the future hold?
Well, it all depends on the continuing development of my new exo-skeleton...

...but I'm pretty excited about it.