If you haven't done this in a while, I highly recommend it: go to your mom's house and find the box in the closet that is filled with old photos (ours is an old Pabst Blue Ribbon beer box). Bring it into the living room and dig in. You can't help but be overcome with joy and laughter... and maybe a strong bout of nostalgia and an awareness that time is passing way too fast.

That is what I did last Friday. I've been out giving a humor talk on growing up in the '70s -- the time I clogged the toilet with an apple core --  and  decided to support it with some fun and funny images from that time. And so it was that I found this photo below, soon to be 46 years old.



My mother and I laughed long and hard going through these photos... and it brings such perspective... one photo is of my mother, now 72, when she was a little girl. And there were others of her when she was 18 and posed for some shots that she sent to my father while he was stationed overseas...  one photo of my father -- I believe it was his high school graduation photo -- had red all over it. I asked my mother what it was... she said it was from kissing the thing while my dad was thousands of miles away. Their wedding photos are striking... so young and trim and good looking... and then the variety of photos over the years that show the growing family, the thinning hair, the  kids getting older and bigger, the weddings of their kids, their grandchildren...

It's quite sobering to go through these photos and overpowering too... In any event, on this cold, overcast Sunday in Pittsburgh I offer one little piece of advice. If you're lucky enough to have your mom and dad still in your life, get over to their house and get out that box of photos.