To Begin With

A lot has changed since then. Today , I no longer hide my pictures.

Way back then, I wanted to be a photographer. I longed to have a camera that had a lens with zooming features. My husband, bless his heart, took me around town to different stores to “shop” for the best camera possible. Only that his idea of shopping was to ask every salesman about all the features in all the cameras and then go to the next store without ever buying anything. Hey, I’m not judging, but not all of us have such a carefree attitude about the time we spend researching items we will never buy. To make a long story short, after days of looking into this shopping experience, he was done. That’s it. It took me a few more days to figure out he was not going to buy me a camera, He only wanted to share with me in the research process of all the details and features related to cameras. That was the first moment during my young marriage that I thought, “Who are you?” You know, that moment when reality begins to chisel at the smooth edges of reality, but lets not digress, suffice to say that yes, I was disappointed, but my loving husband had to live with me while I recovered, so in my book, we’re even.

As a result of this episode, one of our good friends gave me his camera. I don’t remember the make or model, I couldn’t tell you if it was good or not, but I do remember that it had a zoom lens and I loved it. I used so many 35mm rolls of pictures to quell my inspired heart that if I had developed them all, I could possibly find a good picture or two now days. Back then, when I picked up the first roll of developed pictures, I got a slap in the face at the realization that there was not a single picture in that batch that was worth the effort I put into it. I may have been too critical of my work, but even now when I look back on this, I don’t remember any pictures that I liked whatsoever. I never developed the rest of the films. They are somewhere in storage.

Now, deprecating humor not withstanding, I’m sharing this story to tell how a little hand-me-down from a good friend saved my marriage from a disastrous episode. Even though I really wanted to be a photographer, I had no skill, no education, and no talent for it. While you can relay on one, it is possible to succeed if you lack the other, but I had too many strikes against me from the get go and I do appreciate the wisdom my husband showed in not helping me invest lots of money in a pastime I gave up at the first sign of trouble.

=)

Written by Margarita Morgan
September 17, 2014

 

Daily Prompt
Hand-Me-Downs
Clothes and toys, recipes and jokes, advice and prejudice: we all have to handle all sorts of hand-me-downs every day. Tell us about some of the meaningful hand-me-downs in your life.