Old Photographs

At auditions today, one of FC's directors commented that my wallet was too fat. "Not with money", I replied quite seriously. No, it was full instead of every frequent travel club, discount club, gift card and library card I've ever filled out a form for. While I was fishing around for my Cub Scout Membership, AARP application, room key from my anniversary trip, and free pass to a tanning bed that expired in 1986, a bunch of old photographs fell out.

Some nerd-looking dude stared back at me with a stupid grin, as he held the hands of a silly-looking girl that was beautiful, yet a bit geeky herself. I winced,...it was my engagement photo from 1988! Another photo fell out, this one with the same couple. He'd grown a beard and she'd gotten a promising new hairstyle, yet there were these 2 tiny aliens they were holding, recently hatched from some mysterious pod in a wheat field or cocoon hunkered down in a damp cave somewhere. Our first family photo with our 2 daughters,.......WOWZA!!

Old photographs capture just one second in the billions of seconds we all live, yet they say so much about "who we were when". Our tastes of that "when". Our styles of that "when". Our relationships of that "when". So much is captured in that millisecond, and so much is remembered. The studio we went to by the Delaware Cinema for our engagement photos, cause they were having a sale. We ate at Duff's Smorgasbord afterwards, then decided shortly thereafter,.......we don't like Duff's Smorgasbord.

Our first family photos taken at the Sears Portrait Studio in Lafayette Square. A mall that barely even exists today, except for a food stamp supermarket, a 99-cent store, and possibly a store that sells cobwebs or something. We'd had Madeline a few months earlier, and Tina decided that 17 hours after giving birth that Chinese food sounded good, so we went to China Coast with a 17-hour old baby in tow. Think that's bad parenting? With our first, I decided on our anniversary that 3-month old Morgan should celebrate too, so I dipped my teaspoon in champagne and let her lick it. The 30 minutes of shuddering, wincing, puckering, shrieking and bawling that immediately ensued (compounded by Tina's dirty look) let me know that wasn't my finest moment of parenthood!

We all have thousands of photos stuffed in scrapbooks and mounted on walls. Lost in kitchen drawers, shut up in desks, left at people's homes, or even undeveloped from years gone by. I challenge us all to stop sometimes and just open a few packets of these old photographs:

Let them talk to you like they did to me. They're great conversationalists.