Soo did I ever tell you about the time that I got a facebook message from a girl I went to high school with saying she had randomly found a picture of me for sale on ebay?

It kind of went like this..

So I was looking for Wauconda postcards on Ebay and I came across this. Wasn’t sure if you knew someone from Memphis was selling this photograph?

And then she had included a link to an ebay auction selling a photo of me and my mom from right after I had my ‘accident’ (have I every told you that story?)

 

above: photo taken by Maureen Collins. 

Okay so long story made kind of short, when I was 18 months old I was run over by a car and broke my neck. At first the doctors told my parents I wasn’t going to make it.. then I progressed for the next 24 hours.  They told my parents I would be a paraplegic… then I continued to progress and show signs of mobility.  Then they told my parents I would be a vegetable my whole life… and then I continued to progress and show signs of normal brain function (okay well that one might be up for debate ha!). Once I was back home from the hospital, the Sun Times sent a photojournalist and reporter to my house to do a story on me and I guess recently the news publication sold all of their archive of film negatives to another company who is now selling various prints of selected images as historic photographs on ebay, including one of the images from the article about my accident. So of course I bought the 8×10 print being sold in the auction, and once it arrived I noticed there was a label on the back with the title of the article, the date the article had been written, and the photographer’s name. Out of curiosity I googled the name of the photographer and found her info! I emailed her right away telling her the entire story of how I came to have this photograph and asked her if there was any chance she had anything else from that shoot. We have been communicating a little bit back and forth and I’m about to purchase a few other prints from her, but seriously how creepy, weird but totally amazing is that whole story? I can’t even believe that of the 28 days the photo was listed on ebay, an old school mate of mine just so happened to come across it, and I was able to actually track down the photographer.. I can’t even explain how happy I am to have this and how blown away I am at the ways in which the internet connects us all.