Watch Your Answers Change

I would like to have known what my thoughts were as a child.
And since I don’t, I offer it to my son. Banal and obvious some of these questions are. Others are original. All provide a peek into his thoughts.

I have asked my son these questions when he was 5, 7, 9, 10 and 11.
· What do you know a lot about?
· What do your parents know a lot about?
· What do you want to learn in the next year?
· Did you take any trips this past year? To where?
· Where do you wish to go to this coming year?
· Where is your favorite place in the whole world?
· Are you loved?
· How do you know you are loved?
· Is there something that your parents do or say that helps you feel loved?
· What is your favorite color?
· What is your favorite food?
· What is your favorite restaurant?
· What is your favorite beverage?
· Do you have a favorite thing you like to cook/make?
· How many pets do you have and which is your favorite and why?
· Will you be getting any more pets this up coming year?
· Do you have a favorite TV show?
· What was your favorite movie that you saw this past year?
· What is your all time favorite movie thus far?
· Do you have any sleeping friends? [stuffed animals that hang out in bed all day]
· What do you want to do when you grow up?
· How do you think you will make your money when you grow up?
· At what age do you think you will get married?
· At what age do you think you will own a car?
· At what age do you think you will own a house?
· What is your favorite type of car?
· Are you a shower or bath type?
· If you could change the world what would you do?
· If you could change your parents, what would you change about them?
· If you could change something about yourself, what would it be?
· What do you believe to be the most important discovery or invention?
· Do you believe you can do anything when you grow up?
· What is your favorite thing to do by yourself?
· What is your favorite thing to do with your parents?
· How much money do you wish to make this year?
· How will you make it?
· Who are your best friends? Why?
· Anything happen this year that you want to record?
· Anything you are afraid of?

I just reread my own answers from 6 years ago. Pretty funny. I’ll have to record this years’.
I always look back on these things and feel soo separated from who I was at any point in the past. Disconnected would be a better word. I have a poor memory for past events. And there are things I desperately do not want to forget. I think this is why photography is important to me. I feel I have cheated time, by capturing a moment. Being a visual person, these images are portals to those, otherwise, lost memories.

While it is interesting for me to see DJ’s answers change, I do this for him.
So that 10,20, 30 years from now, he can look back and perhaps get a glimpse of himself at that age. Maybe he will connect better with his memory than have I.

For similar reasons, I had his birth videotaped. He was born underwater, at home, by a midwife. The tape does kind of cut short, right after he came out, as there was a sort of emergency situation that freaked out the young video-grapher friend. I have seen the tape maybe 2-3 times. It is not for me. It is for DJ, if he ever wants to be a fly on the wall of his birth. I know I would have liked to have seen my own birth. How about you?