Picture Book

Listen while you read: A-Scooby-Dooby-Do

Picture yourself when you're getting old
Sat by the fireside a-pondering on
Picture book, a picture of your mama
Taken by your papa a long time ago
Picture book of people with each other
To prove they love each other a long time ago
Na, na, na, na, na
Na, na, na, na, na
Picture book
Picture book

A picture of you in your birthday suit
You sat in the sun on a hot afternoon
Picture book, your mama and your papa
And fat old Uncle Charlie out cruising with their friends
Picture book, a holiday in August
Outside a bed and breakfast in sunny Southend
Picture book, when you were just a baby
Those days when you were happy a long time ago
Na, na, na, na, na
Na, na, na, na, na
Picture book
Picture book

~  Ray Davies (The Kinks)

This one goes way back to 1968, but I don't remember it then. It got a second life when Hewlett Packard used it in a commercial for their digital cameras and printers, an effort which earned HP "Campaign of the Year" in 2004. Remember that? I do. The song appears on The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society.

I am in the process of sorting through the thousands of pictures my partner took on our road trip. A much more proficient photographer than I am (and with a much better camera), Ed snaps away, always claiming, "Pixels are cheap." And who can forget a time when they weren't? Back in the day, not only did we have to purchase the Kodak film, we also had to pay for the developing of it. And then we had to (oh, horrors!) wait for the prints, sometimes for days! And given that we only got twelve (or later, 24 or 36) pictures per roll, we were quite selective as to when we clicked the shutter. Surely, depression would set in when the prints finally came through and at least half of them were over or under-exposed, blurry, or worst of all, had the heads cut off. I always put these in the photo albums anyway, because, hell, I paid a lot of money for those bad shots.

Now, we just click "delete" and send those bad pics off to the trash.

Like you, I have lots and lots of photographs stored in albums and boxes. The task of digitalizing them is overwhelming to me, so there they sit. And added to the mess are my late mother's pictures. I have professional photographs of my grandmother as a child at the turn of the (last) century. What will become of all these pictures when I am gone? These are the thoughts that keep me up at night. You, too?

Picture book, when you were just a baby
Those days when you were happy a long time ago

And there it is. We smile for the camera, creating the illusion that there was a time when all was right with the world, a time when we were happy. As Paul Simon sings in "Kodachrome," Makes you think all the world's a sunny day. No wonder we hang on to these memories. Perception is everything.

A-scooby-dooby-do.

The Troll Under the Bridge, Seattle