1964

I LOVE THIS OLD PHOTO.

Until recently I'd never seen this shot of me and Brother Deke standing with Aunt Sheri, my Dad's youngest sister, in my grandparents' backyard. Then about a month ago it arrived in an email from Aunt Sheri's husband out in Florida. Another gift of modern technology. Thanks, Uncle Loren. (That's me on the far right, by the way.)

I always find it odd to discover old pictures of myself that I've never seen. They seem to resonate in ways that old photos I'm familiar with just don't. It's like looking at another angle of yourself. A view both unfamiliar AND familiar.

I look at this photo and I think about something I said in my discussion with the 5th grade writing classes last week. I was telling the kids how writing—whether it be in a journal, a poem, a story—is a great way to document your life.

"I wish I had a journal or some poems that I wrote when I was in 5th grade," I told them. "I think that'd be so cool to look back and see what I was thinking and read what I was feeling back then."

What I failed to mention to the kids is that their lives will be getting documented—via digital photos, video, blogs, YouTube—more than any generation in the history of mankind. These kids today will have access to their memories in a completely different way than we did. I wonder what effect, if any, that will have on them.

If sociologists and cultural critics think the Baby Boomers had a hard time "growing up," what will it be like for today's kids? This generation is destined to have quick access to a deep archive of material from their youth. You're bound to have a whole bunch of these people reliving the touchstone moments, lost in a nostalgic haze for "the good old days."

As much as I'd love to have old home movies or audio cassettes from my childhood, I'm also sort of fond of the hazy mystery of the unfilled-in blanks. With the majority of my formative years having gone unrecorded, I'm free to recalibrate the details in my head. I figure the memories that have survived are there for a reason—whether it be to amuse or enlighten. Every rotten memory is an opportunity to learn and forgive.

I wonder what it'll be like when my 5-year-old nephew Jack-o is my age. In 40 years he'll have accumulated thousands of photos and hundreds of hours of video to catalogue his life. Long lost photos from his childhood will most likely be rare.

Maybe I'll put a couple aside to surprise him with when Uncle Bobby is 86 and living out his twilight years on a farm somewhere on planet Earth.