Perhaps it is a character flaw, but I enjoy watching my children struggle with their offspring. Admittedly, that statement is not indicative of totally rational thinking, but conceivably this relish stems from vindication of the hope that at least some of the effort I expended in the nurture of those to whom I contributed genetic information was not wholly lacking in efficacy. On occasion, I have observed my grandchildren misbehaving, and confronted their parents with the remark that, "My children never did that..." This usually elicits sputtering and "eye rolling" behavior that makes me chuckle. The first phase of one of my photo salvage project is now complete, and I have digitized 655 color slides and 2235 black & white negatives. I did not exercise much stringency culling marginal images and, given the vagaries associated with developing your own film, perhaps as many as 10% of those remaining should have been discarded. Still, with that many pictures there is a high probability that a few will be good and, in fact, some of them are informative. In this letter I draw from those images to present photographic evidence illustrating a few of the things "my children never did..."

First, my kids were never LOUD, or Obstreperous...

My kids never got upset or pouted...

They never mistreated their pets.

None of our dogs ever had it's nose bitten...

...nor was coerced into any undesirable situation...

...nor served as a "hands on" model for a lesson about the anatomy of the canine skull...

...nor served as a pillow as when the occasion required.

Other pets were also always handled with care.

It is quite possible that "sneaky" was never a word in their vocabulary...

They always ate well balanced meals, shunned anything that might cause tooth problems...

...and were always circumspect and dainty while consuming their epicurean diets.

They never ventured into places where they weren't supposed to go...

...and were rigorous and exacting in keeping their fingers to themselves.

They never impeded my progress toward accomplishing any task at hand...

...and under no circumstances would they remove implements I was likely to need.

My children didn't ever take things belonging to their siblings...

...and were never in trouble with the law.

In fact, they didn't like activities that had even a smidgeon on danger.

In summery, as is intuitively obvious to any unbiased observer, MY KIDS were like Mary Poppins-- Practically Perfect in Ever Way!

And by way of post script, Ethan, because I know you like this kind of a shot, this one's for you. I don't claim to understand the rational, but my observation is that mothers tend to have a strong affinity for photo of their naked offspring. Perhaps someday you will be able to figure out why and, if you do, come and explain it to me.