Wordpress - Daily Prompt - Childhood Revisted

What is your earliest memory? Describe it in detail and tell us why you think that experience was the one to stick with you.




How could you not forget such an experience. We always seemed to have a battle with enough money at home. Mum always said that the main thing was to have a cooked meal on the table. We did, not exactly gourmet, but I survivied. However, we always seemed to have money for the little luxuries in life, such as a visit to a professional photographer to have your childhood established as a photographic memory.

The funny thing was looking back and meeting others from the same area, we all seemed to have our image established on a visit to the studio of Mr. Griffiths in the East End of London, Bow to be exact. The boys were pictured with a model car, the girls with a doll's house, or perhaps a doll (I was one of the lucky ones, I had the dolls house).

Of course I was dressed in the best clothes for the occasion according to mum's taste and the bow was my trade mark at that time. I think my mum had about ten bows in different colours, according to what I was wearing. She was a lover of bright colours, so if I was wearing a red dress, she would definitely decide on a yellow bow.

I remember the memorable occasion quite well. I stood next to the doll's house and the photographer told me to put my hand on the roof. I really think he was after a Pulitzer prize for photography. I notice the look in my eyes as if to say "this sucks" and I really think I was ready to throw the brick placed in front of the doll's house at the pseudo Ansel Adams if he had given any more instructions.

Anyhow I survived, dad paid the bill and we went home. Now roughly sixty years later I am glad to have this memory of my first model job. Unfortunately it remained as my only model job. I still wonder what the ornaments on the carpet next to the wall were supposed to represent.