From the Vaults of Hacienda de Meimei

I must remind you first that I am in no way belittling myself, or the choices I made, during the times when these pictures were taken. As you can see here, I actually had a very lovely childhood and I can honestly say that I was as happy as I seemed to be in these pictures. But, c'mon: it was the 1980s...

Oh dear. Oh dear. Where do I begin? Well, for starters, I don't remember if this picture was taken in Hong Kong (Ocean Park?) or Singapore (Sentosa?). This explains the Red Army hat that I'm wearing in this picture, which clashes horribly with the parachute jacket and the baby pink (velour?) jogging pants. And even then, I'm sure that I wore the hat because I was covering up some heinous bangs, since MamaMei used to be in charge of bang trims back in the day - we didn't have any hair experts coaching us through that kind of deal. I can't deny that I was a happy kid in that outfit, though. I'd give anything to get away with the kind of coolness and confidence that I had when I was the age I was in this picture.

Now, this picture makes me want to snorgle my younger self and pinch her little cheeks. If only I had my own children so that they could turn up as adorable and huggable as this! SO. CUTE. (Except for the bangs. Oh no.) Unfortunately, this particular photograph hasn't survived the ravages of time... and neither have those bowl-cut bangs, which make me look like SNL's Target Lady. The shirt says "HAWAII 85" - which means that the shirt was purchased way, way before I up and moved there in the mid-'90s... prescient, much?

There's more in the vaults - and yes, that includes all the crazy hair textures and eyebrow shapes I used to have in the '90s - but I'll have to save those for another day. ;)