<note reads>

Feb 13th

Mrs. Callahan,

Do you know this little boy? While standing in the line to have a picture taken with Santa, this little boy’s mom asked me to take his picture. But, I don’t know her! I forgot I had the picture until coming across it yesterday.

I believe he is new here and very shy. It seems like every time I see him, he is wearing that colorful sweater!

If you don’t know him, could you kindly give it to the office secretary? If I give it to Caitlyn (sp?) to hold, I’m afraid it will end up in Russia!

Thank You –

Noreen Floyd

I have zero recollection of any of this little Santa Clause setup, but I can tell you one thing.

I do recall that my mother “ghosted” that ugly yellow sweater from my laundry a few months after this photo was taken.

This was a practice wherein my mother would sneakily discard (steal) certain items of clothing because I would continually wear them, sometimes day after day.

One day it would be – wa-la! Joe has two brand new (more earth-toney) sweaters – magically hanging in the closet – or a new blue pair of tennis shorts to replace the purple that I originally favored – or whatever other articles of clothing needed replacing.

Since I craved predictability as a child, incidents like this might botheredme for a bit, but I eventually got over it and realized that yes – sometimes things need to be discarded instead of over-used, for the sake of public appearances.

One of those “pride” things I had no interest in, or time for since I just wanted to be comfortable and left alone to think about something.