by Helen Blackmore

Created on: June 22, 2010

"A picture is worth a thousand words".  How many "Kodak" moments did we miss before the advent of the camera phone?  I know I have failed miserably in trying to document our family life, despite my good intentions.  I do have some photo albums I dutifully put together, a scrapbook of my older sons' exploits, a yet-to-be-finished scrapbook for my younger son, and a few boxes of photos yet to be organized and filed somewhere.  I am also working on (for the past year or more) a Family Tree book for my family.  Which brings to mind another quote, "The path to hell is paved with good intentions".

There have been so many events I would really have liked a photo of!  When my son was a toddler, he somehow got this rocking chair stuck on his head.  Really stuck.  It took a half hour of vegetable oil, butter, and much cajoling, but I finally got that thing off his head.  No film in the camera.  He also got his head stuck in the stair railing.  Crisco to the rescue again.  No film in the camera.  A family friend came over for a weekend visit.  Walt was a big, bearded guy, and the men had quite a few drinks that night.  Since I am quite the practical joker, I could not resist the impulse to apply makeup on the unsuspecting Walt snoring on my couch.  I used blue eyeshadow, bright red lipstick, blush, and eye liner.  He was a work of art!  That morning, my husband woke him up, and didn't even give him a chance to think, he grabbed him and propelled him out the front door, telling him they had to get to the store right away to purchase coffee for breakfast.  Poor Walt, being half asleep, complied, and they arrived at the local store.  Strolling up and down the aisles, my husband asked him to get bread and eggs, and he kept replying "Yes dear", he thought sarcastically, but the other shoppers certainly had their eyebrows raised at the sight of this heavily made-up lumberjack-type man.  Finally, they arrived at the register, and he was trying to flirt with the cashier, who was trying not to burst out laughing.  It finally dawned on poor Walt that something was amiss, and he looked in the mirror when they got back to the car.  I believe part of what he said was "I'm gonna kill you!".  Yes indeed, a Kodak moment.  No film in the camera.

I've read somewhere that when we die, there is something in Heaven called "The Book of Records".  You can check out your whole life!  I would really like to have access to that right now.  Perhaps there is a heavenly internet site that we could just copy and paste our best moments to our "My Pictures" file on our computer.  Oh the albums I could create from that!  Then again, it would also contain our worst moments.  I bet some hacker would find their way into the heavenly internet site and blackmail us, even if it were a mortal sin.

I guess I will just have to be satisfied with the photos I have taken, and enjoy my photo-less memories as best I remember.

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