Angel Island encore

It started in Yosemite, I guess.

Jeffrey took the camera from me somewhere on the way to Yosemite Falls. He said "Gimme that thing. You don't take enough pictures, Big Daddy."

Then he just went on a picture-taking rampage. The batteries finally died on him just as he was doing a death-defying self-portrait 2000-feet up on a granite outcropping.

What can I say? I grew up with Kodak Instamatics and the little twelve-exposure film cartridge and the flash cubes. Remember the flash cubes?

The cube would let out this blinding flash, and then it rotated around, and the side of it that had flashed would melt into a blackened blob, and the air would fill with the stench of scorched plastic.

And you only got four flashes out of the thing, and then you had to throw it away and snap on another one.

The point being that pictures were a limited resource in my day. You didn't just click away indiscriminately. You waited until, you know, you were shaking hands with Pluto or standing in front of the Caesars Palace marquée or something, and then you took a picture.

But Jeffrey, he just has no concept of all that. Angel Island he commandeered the camera again, and from the time we got on the boat, he's just runnin' around goin' click click click, click click click. It's like he was on assignment with LOOK.

Kurt "big daddy" True
12 october 2006