Memories Brought back to Life

Kodak slides…You remember those things? Little pieces positive film in a cardboard frame? Well, it has been a long time since I pulled out my old slide projector to view them and it wasn’t until I found a small collection of them while snooping around in one of my father’s desk drawers did I have reason to do so. Well… I wasn’t really snooping as I was really looking for something that my dad needed and had lost. Fortunately I looked there because had I not, I would have missed out on memories that I had forgotten all about.

Coming across this small collection of memories, I pulled each of them out and peered at them hoping to see the content of these slides. I couldn’t really see them very well so I brought them home and slid them into the projector for proper viewing. Though it was fairly difficult to see them on my coloured wall, it didn’t take me very long to realize that I had never seen them before.

My next plan was to scan them in order to have them turned into photographs. Later that day I went to the local computer store and purchased a scanner that had the ability to scan slides. Within a 24 hour period, I had the digital product there on my screen and 24 hours later I had the 4 by 6 prints in my hand. My final task was to return the scanner to the store as I no longer needed it. Okay! Okay! Please don’t be “hatin’ me” for my questionable actions but I just figure that as long as big box stores are willing to have a satisfaction guaranteed promotion I might as well take them up on it… I was satisfied and so I returned it! Yah, I know! I know! Just trying to justify my actions…

Anyways… Back to the slides I was mentioning (changing the subject…).

The photographs turned out to be photographs that nobody had seen before. You see, in my experience, when you take slide photos, you only really see them once unless you are prepared to take the slide projector out, rack up the slides in the carousel, focus the projector, set up the screen, turn on the projector only to realize that you inserted the slides in upside down, yank them out and reposition them, put the lights out, trip over the power cord … and now you know why we ever saw them at all let alone once. It is also quite possible that we never saw them in the first place since my parents never owned a slide projector and the slides were taken only months before we left England for Canada at my ripe old age of six.

I stood at the WalMart Photo Center flipping through the photos that I had just picked up… Talk about taking one back to their childhood! There were a few photos of my sister and I arm in arm, photos of my parents younger than what I am now as well as a number of family photos. There was also a photograph of me holding the same camera that I spoke of in my post on March 8, 2007 titled “The Family Camera.” Once I saw how well they looked, I turned around and ordered duplicates for the rest of my family. My parent’s were close to tears after receiving them from me and it wasn’t long before they had them up on the shelves in frames.

It is amazing how pieces of memories printed on paper can warm hearts and put smiles on faces! Photographs are important to me as it passes memories down through the family tree and reminds us all of the good times, hard times and precious times that we had.

As the saying goes … “A picture can paint a thousand words!” ... or is it "A photo can't paint a million memories!"