Kodak Moments

A picture is worth a thousand words. Some pictures leave you speechless. Then there are those that make you laugh so hard you cannot breathe, let alone speak.

They used to be called Kodak Moments, after the major player in the photography field. (Might have to explain that to the younger readers.)

With the recent passing of my father we inherited a few bits and pieces; a computer desk and laptop among them.

I was both happy and sad to see some photos of dad that I'd never seen before, on the disk drive of his computer.

And both sad and happy to have to find room in the cluttered corner of our lounge room we call an 'office', to fit the desk in.

As with any modern family, the amount of actual photographic images is far out of proportion with the number of shots we snap at any given time. These days the visit to the camera shop to develop and print pictures is a forgotten journey, and the trip down memory lane is a lot faster thanks to Instagram and the like. Digital cameras can run off several shots per second, and you can immediately see whose head was cut off, whose finger was over the lens, or even who forgot to take the lens cap off, which happened a lot in the good old days.

To me it means that the photos of old, taken on honest-to-goodness film, are a lot more precious than ever before. It was expensive to print pictures back in the day, and the shots you got were worth every cent. In some cases- priceless (like the picture of my sister and her man all fitted out for a fancy dress ball, but the only thing mum managed to get in frame was their heads)!

I wouldn't even begin to explain 'slide nights' to the current generation. They were even a little before my time.

Now it's just point and shoot and a lot of shots don't make it out of the camera, let alone into an album.  If you're lucky (or just plain organised) you download them to a disk.

So it was when my family started shuffling things around in the lounge room to fit dad's desk in.  In amidst the mess my Beloved discovered a CD of photos that his mother had sent us- going back to pictures taken when he was but a babe in arms.

Our boychild, who had been given the job of checking any such disks for important info, started to laugh at the thought of seeing his father as a baby. My Beloved took this as an insult and came into the next room where our girlchild and I were sitting.

"He doesn't believe that there are photos of 'young daddy'!" says the man of the moment, in a huff

"There are?" exclaims our daughter

"Because cameras weren't invented when daddy was a bub" says I, tongue-in-cheek

"No, I didn't think so" replies our girl, in all seriousness.

I won't go into the full reply that was given to us by the man of the house, suffice to say he was even less impressed, and amongst his mutterings about photography having been around for close to 200 years now and he wasn't that old yet, my daughter turns to me and says:

"What does it mean when daddy sticks his two fingers up?"

"It means he's not happy with us" I say

More mirth from me, and more grumblings from my man later, and the children finally took a look at their father in his youth.  And got the giggles again.

Needless to say my Beloved won't be lining us up for any slide nights in the foreseeable future.

The look on his face was a Kodak Moment for sure.

I just wish I'd had my camera handy.

Jx

©2012

Snakes & Adders

I have a confession to make. I am Ophidiophobic.

Even the word slithers off your tongue. In plain English it means scared of snakes. In anyone’s language, it’s a fairly understandable fear.

I don’t remember when I first became aware that snakes and I did not get along, but I do recall being a kid and doing a pretty mean rendition of Jesus during his whole walking-on-water routine the time the SES fellas suggested we hop out of the flood waters due to some King Browns seen floating by.

There’s even proof of my phobia in full living colour, from when a bunch of us stopped for a scenic shot at a local lookout a few years ago, to test out a friend’s whizz-bang new camera with self-portrait feature.

She set the timer to take a series of shots, and when she got the film developed a little later, here’s how the sequence panned out (much to everyone’s amusement).

1st picture: all subjects happy and accounted for, standing by a rock in the sunshine.
2nd picture: there’s me, looking off to one side while the rest are still smiling inanely at the camera.
Picture number 3: here I am making my move, in the opposite direction from where I was last looking.
And the 4th picture in the sequence: well, if you look closely you can just make out that blurry bit at the bottom of the shot is actually my foot as I run away.
As for picture number 5, all I can say is at least the scenery was nice.

Talk about a Kodak moment!

So you can imagine my utter glee when my darling daughter was invited to a friend’s birthday party where the special guest was the Reptile Man.

Obviously this phobia isn't inherited because every time he came round our side of the circle for the kids to pat the ‘pets’, I found myself “just popping over to check out the refreshment table” while my little girl was front and centre with the creatures. (I’m only hoping that my trembling burnt off some of the extra calories I consumed in the process.)

And if I didn’t think it would have done irreparable damage to my child’s standing amongst her peers, I would’ve happily left before the official opening of the presents, since Mr Reptile decided he would allow photo opportunities for the little partygoers at the same time.

Oh yes, there was Miss 3 with a dirty great python wrapped around her shoulders like the feather boa that claimed its name, and there was me trying to stop my hand from shaking enough to snap the photo. Of course I had to politely decline the man’s kind offer for me to hold the thing as well. (I mean, kids don’t need to hear that kind of language.)

My ophidiophobia even sneaks up on me while I sleep. Now, I’ve heard that some dream interpreters say that seeing snakes in your own private picture show is actually a phallic symbol. Well, let me tell you, even if I met the man* who was represented by those serpents of indeterminate length, I would still run the other way!

Yes, to paraphrase Freud: sometimes a snake is just a snake. And I’m afraid of them all.

Unless of course we’re talking snakeskin shoes and handbags…maybe then I might be open for discussion. ;-)

Jx
©2009

(NB: my Beloved wanted me to include a note that the above passage* casts no aspersion whatsoever on his snake-handling ability, if you know what I mean.)