I don’t know about you, but I seem to have a lot of super-embarrassing photos of myself as a kid. It’s as if my parents were somehow colluding against me — for what reason, I can’t imagine — or I was myself subtly trying to sabotage my own hopes for future coolness. (It worked, by the way; are you happy now, Cruel Younger Self?) To make myself feel better (and turn this blog into something other than Portrait of the Flosser as a Young Nerd), I decided this would make a great fourth photo challenge, and the collective results could be a really fun way to visualize our staff and readers. (That’s right Mango, Will, Jason and the rest of the team — I want embarrassing kid pix of you, too!)

I tried in vain to narrow my humiliating pictures down to one, but it was a toss-up between these two doozies: in the above, I tricycle quietly but carry a big stick; below, I’m asking for trouble with my loose-boweled childhood pet, Petey the Parakeet. Now I showed you mine, so show me yours!

Send your pictures (along with some descriptive info and a sentence or two about why you read mental_floss), and get ‘em to us by Sunday night! Don’t worry if you’ve got naughty bits exposed (it happens), we promise we’ll use the blur tool liberally before posting (or at least put a little black bar over your eyes, heh heh). Email them to flossypics (at) gmail (dot) com.

Previous photo challenges:

Our Readers’ “Pants”
Ill-Advised Business Names
Show Us Your Junk