This photograph, taken when I was six, gives an interesting glimpse of my childhood. I sit on the "porch" of Rosie's dog house, our black lab given to me for my fourth birthday. In my lap I hold one of her puppies from her first litter, Rusty, which we gave to my cousins. This picture has a strangely nostalgic feel for me. It seems like a childhood in disarray. The tipped over toy horse in the foreground, obviously too small for my age with a broken front wheel, bits of sticks scattered along the ground intermingled with straw from the dog house, a crushed cinder block below me to the left, and the wheel of a plastic tricycle just visible on the right, all give the impression that things had been disrupted, dismantled. Add to that, neither I nor the puppy are looking at the picture taker (probably my mom), and it seems like a memory of a time forgotten, or, perhaps, unremembered. One might think it was summer, since I am wearing Mario Brothers flip-flops, a shirt that is possibly one or two sizes too small, and light pants, however, as this was in California, this was more likely fall. Too-long bangs hide my eyes from the viewer, adding to the impression of general neglect present in the entire photo and indicating that the school year had not yet started.