Smacktalk

An older lady wearing a Steelers shirt just passed by us on our way down California, and since I'm wearing my Pats shirt, she said "Bad luck today!"

Geez, no respect, I tells ya...

13: Moving Pictures

My dad used to go through rolls and rolls of thirty-five millimeter film
As a reporter he'd shoot multiple angles of the same subject
And send his shots off to the editor along with the copy he'd written
And hope the layout team would know enough to select the right shot
When it ran in the local section of tomorrow's paper

When I was a kid pictures were on three-by-five inch glossy cardstock
Our family stored them in albums in my parents' bedroom
Thousands of pictures, many from before my time,
Some in fading color and many in classy black and white
My sisters' and parents' memories caught forever and given back to them

Today, I moved a few hundred pictures from my wife's camera to this laptop
Shot after shot of our recent vacation, local color and whatnot,
Perhaps even a few pictures of our dinners at favorite restaurants
Not a shot wasted, not one picture ruined by overexposure
Ready to be cropped, ready to be edited or maybe even deleted

It took all of fifteen minutes and not one penny was spent
Every single image in one folder, ready to be viewed and tweaked
Added to the thousands of pictures on a laptop the size of a large book
All of them very nearly exactly what we saw when it was taken
Our own new memories, awaiting our perusal, awaiting a printout

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