No, Lee, tell us what you REALLY think...

Leeandra Nolting

Leeandra Nolting
Location
New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
Birthday
July 08
Title
Assistant Guru (not to be confused with Assistant to the Guru)
Bio
Proud native Hoosier who’s settled permanently in New Orleans. Teach English. Live in an old whorehouse with three very talkative and sexually-confused birds and one very talkative bird that isn’t sexually confused at all but just wants what s/he wants, which is pretty much everything and everybody. They appear quite frequently in my writing. Former bedpan wrangler, radio announcer, preschool teacher, and freshman comp. instructor. Once accidentally picked out A Clockwork Orange for a make-out movie. Have a very rational appreciation for the works of Flannery O’Connor and the television show The X-Files and an irrational fear of Meg Ryan. All my friends are drunks.

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Salon.com
FEBRUARY 7, 2009 6:53PM

My Mommy Dressed Me and Did My Hair

Rate: 6 Flag

Just for fun...

2 years old 

July 4th, 1982.  I still basically look like this, but with darker hair.

linus and lucy 

This picture basically sums up the first twenty or so years of my little brother's life.

First Day of Kindergarten 

Plotting matricide on the first day of kindergarten at Rosenmund School.  Mom made that stupid apple name tag for me because when we went to visit the spring before, all the kindergarteners were wearing them and she somehow got it into her head that she was supposed to make me one.  I argued that that was stupid, the teacher would make them for the kids.  Mom made me wear it anyway.  When I got to school, Mrs. Ellinger had, in fact, made apple name tags for everyone.  She said, "Oh, I see you brought your own.  Let's just put it in the cubby."  She took it off my neck with the very tips of her fingers and carried it over to the cubby, holding it as far away from her body as she could, like it was a dead rat or something instead of yarn and construction paper.  She made me put it back on to go home, but as soon as I got in Angela Werner's mom's car for carpool, I took it off and crumpled it up and shoved it between the seat cushions.

leave me alone 

Leave me alone or I'll bite you.  (Note:  In this picture I am holding Hounddoggy, son of Tracy the stuffed dog that I carried around until I was eight or so.)

first communion 

About to meet Jesus in the Holy Eucharist for the very first time, and oh so thrilled about the prospect.

easter 1989 

Easter, Chicago, 1989.  Dad was SO pissed when this photo came back from the developers.  He still hates it.  Mom cackles whenever she sees it, though.

third grade 

Third grade school picture.  I did not want to wear this outfit or hairdo, but Mom made me.  She made me wear this outfit (though not the hairdo) again a year later to my First Confession.

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embarrassing childhood photos

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You were adorable, even when you wore the "cranky face."
Lisa Kern
February 07, 2009 07:06 PM
I ruined a lot of family photos with faces too. Then I taught my younger cousin how to do it.
Mrs. Michaels
February 07, 2009 07:11 PM
Lisa--thanks, but that IS my real face. It's been pretty much stuck like that for 25 years.

Mrs. Michaels--ah, the fun of corrupting the younger generation.

Everybody else--please, show us your worst!
Leeandra Nolting
February 07, 2009 07:25 PM
always full of spirit, you...
Brian B
February 07, 2009 08:22 PM
That Easter picture cracks me up.
odetteroulette
February 08, 2009 01:35 AM
You don't look thrilled about First Holy Communion.
Con Chapman
February 08, 2009 10:27 AM
Con--I wasn't. That meant that I'd have Jesus inside me, and then I'd have to be good (or at least have a hard time justifying being bad), and being good wasn't something I had much interest in.
Leeandra Nolting
February 08, 2009 03:11 PM
I too, had Sullen Child Syndrome -- my mother still has up in her house photo studio portraits of me at about 2, frowing melancholicly into the camera. I also pitched a fit, screaming and crying, about the dress my mother wanted me to wear on the first day of kindergarten -- really, I just didn't want to go to kindergarten, or, it turned out, to any day of school ever again, K-12.

And speaking of hair dos, Mom kept me in a bowl cut until I was old enough to have my protests deemed worthy, round about fourth grade. What is with these women sometimes?
Lekkers
February 11, 2009 02:35 PM
Yes, the Little Dutch Girl haircut. Had that from about age 2 1/2 till beginning of 2nd grade. With me, it was very thick, coarse, unruly hair that Mom didn't want to have to comb. (If it's straightish in these pictures, it's because Mom blow-dried it that way.)

She basically gave up on doing my hair on a daily basis when I was eight or nine, so I had a couple of years of white-girl dreads in there before I hit puberty and started giving a rat's ass.

Don't even get me started about the hand-me-down outfits from 1974 that I was wearing in 1988...

Ah, for the days when I only had to wash my hair once a week instead of every day...
Leeandra Nolting
February 11, 2009 02:59 PM
Also, although you can't see them here, those are elastic-waisted purple polyester mega-bell bottom slacks I have on in the third grade picture.
Leeandra Nolting
February 11, 2009 03:01 PM
well, if you had committed matricide and if i were in the jury, that photo would have won you an acquittal.

judging from you profile pic, you haven't aged a bit.

i do applaud you courage for posting these.
Major Mojo
February 12, 2009 03:33 PM