Image Boss! (no politics, no sexy pics) Have fun. ❤️

I’d buy this place. It has sentimental value.

This is the only way to travel about. Um… when we’re all allowed to, at least.

Link here

JaredM? Testing, testing… one, two, four… sssibilance… sssibilance…

My idea of a million-pound home witih nine-hundred, ninety thousand hopefully left over for survival and for sharing with people without pounds:

As the Image Boss, show me an image that closest resembles that of your oldest memory

I remember going to preschool with a girl named Coy.

After preschool, she went to different schools than I did, so I never saw her again.

I had a crush on her, and she was blonde.

Here's a pic that kinda looks like her back then:

Was barely 2yo, a gril came running at me to gimme a hug’n’kiss, and sent me sailing down a flight of stairs.

At least that’s the official story.

Well, that explains a lot. :wink:

So, it’s difficult to accurate determine or describe your “first” memory as we can’t really recall memories until we are 2-3 years old and even then they are often random moments with little context for time or place; we may even remember specific people, but perhaps without faces. I’ve long suspected that my own first memory may be as much imagined as real, though it’s always seemed entirely real to me.

I was in bed one night in my family’s manufactured home, which everyone then called a “trailer” but I’ve since found that people get upset if you call them that :wink: . I was 2 years old and I had a new baby brother who was almost 4 months old. It was late.

My memory begins when my Mom woke me up and took me into the living room just outside my doorway, where we all then sat on the couch for some reason. Mom sat me on her lap with Dad sitting near the front edge of the couch beside us and my brother lying behind us. It was night and I did not know why this was happening. I do not recall the terrifying noise, which is one reason I’ve long been suspicious. I also remember nothing that happened after being on the couch, but that story is why my memory matters.

What happened after sitting down was that our trailer was violently rocked and pushed across our yard, ripped off its frame by a high bank, oddly without rolling over, and placed flatly into the swollen creek with nearly everything still inside… except the floor. My Mom had apparently held onto me as we were tossed about, though we both had deep cuts that gave us long-lasting scars, though mine has disappeared during adulthood. Afterward, my brother could not be found, however, and it was pitch black (the Dark Ages were truly dark as they had no LED flashlights!)

Dad frantically searched in the dark waters by feel and after some unknown number of long minutes found my brother behind a chair floating face-down and lifeless. My father had no CPR training, but successfully resuscitated my brother, though they would later drain even more water from his lungs at the hospital. Our vehicles were destroyed, but a sheriff’s deputy arrived and drove us to town.

Virtually everything was ruined or missing; clothing, a car, a pickup, a farm truck, a garage full of tools, etc. Even my father’s tobacco barn half a mile away was entirely destroyed and there are still today pieces of roofing tin wrapped like toilet paper around trees on the neighboring hillside; reminders that /something/ happened here. The Salvation Army clothed us and my Mom was so thankful that she donated what she could to them for the rest of her life.

The date was April 3, 1974 and the cause of this destruction was a huge F4 tornado that was just one of perhaps148 that became known as the Super Outbreak. This would only be surpassed by the 2011 Super Outbreak, which unfortunately affected many of of the same areas, though not us. It will likely not take 37 years to see yet another, perhaps even larger, Super Outbreak.

My little brother is today an architect whose firm designs schools across the state. He has a wife and 3 wonderful kids, though he’s always had some minor sleep disorders where he may occasionally sleep walk or not remember anything that happened yesterday evening. These issues may be unrelated to his drowning, however :slight_smile: .

I, on the other hand, have nothing at all; no family, no house, no job, no car, deeply negative net worth, and no friends that still live nearby or which I remain in contact with. This has little to nothing to do with the tornado :wink: . I just find it interesting that he drowned when he was less than 4 months old, but succeeded at life where I did not. Another brother and sister were born after the tornado and they have normal lives as well, full of both joy and pain.

It’s difficult to say whether my memory of the 1974 event is real, as I heard the story many times before my mother’s death; my father avoids talking about it. However, I have never once recalled anything that happened during or after the tornado strike; I only remember being awakened late at night and strangely sat upon the couch. I suspect that a false memory would include other parts of the story, but this obviously does not prove anything.

Though I don’t recall my parents’ faces or demeanor in the memory, it might be possible that the entire reason I remember the first part of the event was the worry and fear that I detected in my parents. Children know when something is wrong, as they get their cues from their parents’ facial expressions, voices, and mannerisms.

Forgive the two images, but I felt that they belonged together and it’s surely closer to the rules than posting whole videos :wink: . I will not make an entry tomorrow.

“Our” tornado is number 64 on the map below.

My next memory? “Helping” my mother search the downstream creek bed that summer looking for her engagement ring. We did this each sunny afternoon while my brother napped. This memory I am certain is real, as I found it strange and later had years of nightmares about being trapped in a deep creek gorge having been “abandoned” by my family (perhaps because Mom was scouring the creek every afternoon while trying to keep an eye on me and I felt wary being so far from her reach).

Among the many ruined items, Mom soon found the band of her ring in the large, muddy, rock-filled creek, but the diamond was broken off and missing. She kept searching for weeks afterward and eventually, miraculously, noticed the glint of the small diamond hundreds of feet downstream in a creek that runs about 30 feet wide. The jeweler obviously repaired it for free after hearing the story.

So my own first memories were also my mother’s lifelong “miracle” stories and who could blame her; if I lost a diamond down a creek, I would not bother to look for it :frowning: . Yes, I understand that my memories are more likely to be manufactured than real due to Mom’s re-tellings, but I had these very specific, out-of-context memories before she began telling us the stories. Also, I have no doubt about watching her searching the creek, as it was the first time I got to play in mud or wade in water that wasn’t in the bathtub :wink: .

When I was about five years old, I was in Sunday School.

My Sunday School teacher asked me what my favorite hymn was.

I replied, "Another One Bites the Dust", which was my favorite song on the radio back then.

When I was less than four, my father built a patio area at the back of our house with hand-built formwork to contain concrete that he mixed with a shovel. I got to ‘help’ by adding water and gravel at the appropriate times. I only recall one day of work on this, but I believe it took more than a weekend to finish. We moved from that house not long after, and I’ve never been back to it. My understanding is that the house is still the same as when we left though.

Hmmm… JaredM?

Throne is available to anyone that wants it :wink: .

HERE!! in time I guess.

Lightbringer. You are the Image Boss

Wait… what? Me?

Aaaauuugh! Pressure…

I guess pix of scantily-clad beach-bunnies is out, eh? :expressionless:

Howbow pix of mischievous animals?

Cat taking a revenge-dump on someone’s sweater, seagull snatching someone’s lunch, raccoon cutting someone’s brake-line, etc.

Tiger Cub Launches Sneak Attack

New Zealand Keas will happily take anything loose off your car, if you let them.

Carrying a large vial of T-virus? :laughing:

Hmmm, where have I seen that knife non-murdering crow before? Déjà vu :wink: ?

(Can’t be murder, as it appears to be alone)

I heard someone request beach bunnies, so…

(If no image appears, try disabling you ad-blocker or temporarily allowing “tripadvisor.com”)

Bunnies have apparently become a big nuisance in Cannon Beach, Oregon, yet there are, of course, photos of idiot tourists feeding them. As the great Calvin of Calvin & Hobbes said years ago,

Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.

Just under the wire, but I was gonna call it soon anyway.

I liked ’em all, but there weren’t too many takers this time.

I like murderous crows, even if not in an actual murder, so RC takes it today.

Have at it, Rac!