I was waiting til the final installment of this snark before bringing up the traumatic effect that this book had on me....
The bit where Claudia's parents explain to her that they have more photos of Janine because they were so excited to have had a kid and it was all new and they wanted to document every moment of it...? Yeah, I was the oldest child (I have one sister, 7 years younger than me), and my parents have a grand total of maybe 15 photos of me from before I reached the age of 5 or 6. They have literally a DOZEN albums full of photos of my younger sister in the first two years of her life (which is about how much there'd been of it when I read this book). I worried and stressed over this for weeks, thinking that my parents must have not wanted me, if the way they were supposed to demonstrate how much I meant to them, according to Claudia's mum, was to take loads of photos of me. They must have been waiting for my sister to come along before they did this, because I was such a disappointment.
Obviously, many years later, I realise that the reason for this was the fact that I was born in Moscow during the complete disintegration of the government, my family had pretty much lost everything and had other things on their minds at that point, and besides, didn't even OWN a camera. They got their first camera after moving to the UK, a year or two before my younger sister was born. So there's that.
But when I was 9, it bothered me a lot. Curse you, Ann!
The bit where Claudia's parents explain to her that they have more photos of Janine because they were so excited to have had a kid and it was all new and they wanted to document every moment of it...? Yeah, I was the oldest child (I have one sister, 7 years younger than me), and my parents have a grand total of maybe 15 photos of me from before I reached the age of 5 or 6. They have literally a DOZEN albums full of photos of my younger sister in the first two years of her life (which is about how much there'd been of it when I read this book). I worried and stressed over this for weeks, thinking that my parents must have not wanted me, if the way they were supposed to demonstrate how much I meant to them, according to Claudia's mum, was to take loads of photos of me. They must have been waiting for my sister to come along before they did this, because I was such a disappointment.
Obviously, many years later, I realise that the reason for this was the fact that I was born in Moscow during the complete disintegration of the government, my family had pretty much lost everything and had other things on their minds at that point, and besides, didn't even OWN a camera. They got their first camera after moving to the UK, a year or two before my younger sister was born. So there's that.
But when I was 9, it bothered me a lot. Curse you, Ann!
/end personal anecdote
xD
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