For nearly 9 years a disposable camera has been cruising with me in my car. A disposable camera all filled up with mystery pictures of which I can’t remember taking. What? you say. Nine years?!?!?! It’s short of a miracle I know. Never mind that I’ve had a car for 9 years, 12 to be exact, and I’m pretty proud that I’ve had a vehicle for 12 years in this day and age, but the fact that I am so huge of a procrastinator that I haven’t had filmed developed in 9 years is mind-boggling, no?
How many times in the past 9 years have I been to “The Walmarts”? To CVS? To Walgreens?
It is not due to lack of opportunity that I haven’t taken this camera into a photo lab and had it developed. The opportunity presented itself thousands of times, yet there the camera sat, in the little cubby hole underneath the factory stereo with a cassette player. What you say, is a cassette player? Well, boys and girls after 8 tracks they invented this music recorder called a cassette. You had to make sure you always had a pencil handy too when your cassette player ate your tape and you had to wind it back together…….
But I digress…..
This disposable camera has traveled more than 100,000 miles with me. It has toasted in the triple digit Texas heat locked in a car that a poodle wouldn’t last 5 minutes in, and it has froze in the below zero wind chills of winter.
At this point, there is no point in getting it developed. I am sure the film is ruined. But it is one of the cameras we bought for our wedding nearly 9 years ago and curiosity and maybe a bit of motivation got the best of me. Secretly I was hoping there might be a picture of my dad tucked away waiting to be unearthed.
I got a wild hair and took the camera to “The Walmarts” not knowing if they even still developed film the old-fashioned way. I had to ask an associate, a young girl, who looked at me as if my face had gone green, obviously clueless to what I was asking of her, and got an older lady associate to help me find the dillymebob where I drop film off. Using the word dillymebob will often cause people to look at you as if your face has gone green. You should try it.
7-10 days I waited. It’s nothing like 9 years. I actually forgot about it and received a call telling me my film was ready to be picked up.
And there they were. Pictures from 9 years ago. They actually developed if you can believe that. The Panhandle Texas weather aint got nothing on a 35 mm Polaroid disposable camera.
The only wedding pictures happened to be of my sister and I getting our hair fixed for the wedding. The rest were just of life.
Like this one, which I just love. My younger, moustached husband bottle feeding a calf while a sun bleached Ash sits astraddle. The look on her face is priceless.
Here’s my sister, who probably is going to kill me. She’s smiling big, isn’t she pretty? I’m not sure whether she was sun bleached or just bleached, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen her blonde.
My mom who despises getting her picture taken, but in my opinion, there’s just not enough pictures of her floating out there on the internet, and this one is good.
Then there were dune buggy riding, 4 wheeler riding, and ballet dancing pictures as well. Most things I don’t remember even occurring.
I’m glad I have these pictures to remind me.
Angel Wheeler 