Photo Day 2017: What If We Met When We Were Young

“You’ll always be my favourite “what if”.”
Celeste Koh

#170914#

The couple day in Korea this month is known as Photo Day! It’s a day designated for couples to take photos together at a photo booth or a professional studio and display them.

Knowing that Photo Day was coming in a few days’ time, I was getting troubled over what I should do for that day. Should I draw something special again, like the drawings I did for the other couple days in the past few months? But what should I draw? A camera or photo frame with a couple portrait of the two of us? But it seemed like a tedious load of work for me to do. Then, somehow an idea struck me – how about compiling some of my own childhood photos in comparison with hers and putting them together?

A few months ago, Taenggu actually sent some of her baby and childhood photos to Taeyeon Fan Union which were later printed into photo cards. Back then, I was so amused by how cute she was as a baby and felt inspired to dig out my own childhood photos too. I even thought about creating a special column on this blog just to share these old photos of mine and try to find some possible connections to her childhood days even. But somehow I didn’t manage to get enough motivation to do this and the idea was eventually pushed to the back of my head. Now suddenly, Photo Day became an excellent opportunity for me to revive this idea again.

My mum took several photos of me and my siblings when we were little, so we kept quite a huge collection of these photo albums in a cupboard at home. On Tuesday night, 2 days before Photo Day, I began my search through these photo albums. My main aim was to find those photos that contained some sort of similarities to Taenggu’s ones. And that was when my mind started to get creative, thinking about how to make links between our photos here and there. It was really fun, amusing myself in the process. Haha. And then, finally I made a little comic strip out of them. I guess this is still considered a kind of art too. Hehe.

So here goes…

Taenggu’s Omma said when Taenggu was little, she loved putting anything and everything on her own head, things like buckets and pails. Keke how cute

My mum was taking photos of me when I was in the bath tub, washing myself with a pail. I was 2 years old.

I loved to hug teddy bears when I was little. My favourite thing to do was to scratch my teddy bear’s nose. Hehe.

Managed to find a photo of myself sitting in a baby walker like Taenggu. And both of us were wearing similar white singlets too! Hahaha

The right side are photos of me at different stages of my education life, from preschool all the way to junior college years. My heart is still fluttering at how cute and pretty Taenggu looked when she was a student. She must have been a really smart student. Keke.

These photos/comic strips actually have some implications from another post I wrote in May. In HIGH SCHOOL GIRL CRUSH – 안경탱, I asked a dozen of what-ifs. What if Taenggu was a girl I knew when I was young? I imagined a lot of things like that from our childhood photos too. What if Taenggu was my playmate when I was a kid? Would my life have been different and less lonely?

Seeing these photos from my childhood and teenage years, I feel inspired to write my own personal life stories here too. Especially how I have been searching for a best friend, a soulmate all my life since I was little. Yeah, I felt lonely as a kid too. So I will be sharing bits and pieces of my childhood stories in the future and may also fulfil my original plan of having a special space for these childhood comic strips too! Haha so stay tuned for them! <3

I shall round off this post with my present day photos I took yesterday during lunch at the cafe at my office building. Have a nice day and good coffee! 🙂