This is almost impossible for a person younger than me to understand but there are fewer than ten pictures of me between the ages of twenty and twenty-five and not a single one of me age twenty-two.

I can also only think of one extant photo of me age 18. I remember a girl I met in Detroit Lakes, MN took my picture that year and promised to send it to me but never did, so maybe there’s one in a box somewhere in MN. Just a random picture of a peachfuzz kid standing by a train.

There was also a mugshot of me taken that year that was apparently lost in a fire when the Boulder courthouse burned sometime in the 80’s.

Age nineteen there were a handful taken in Spokane. When I was 26 I got sober and started playing in bands, so there started to be pictures of me again. It wasn’t until 2006 that the number of photos of me exploded, and since then there have been an uncountable number.

But between the ages of about thirteen, when I stopped being an adorable kid with a camera-crazy dad, and age 38 when phones truly became cameras, every picture of me in the world would fit in half a shoebox. I know because I have the shoebox.