783 Reasons Why Family Photos Make Me Crazy

That is not my favorite picture of Jerusalem but it comes from a free stock photo site and it works as part of my introduction.

Works because if you are like me you have a ton of photos that were taken using film, printed out and placed into albums.

And yet you also have a ton of digital photos floating around, some of which was printed out and placed into albums and some of which has been uploaded and left in the cloud.

Did I mention the benefit of having moved five or six times in 10 years is that some things have been placed in boxes and haven’t been seen in years.

In theory those items should be eliminated from our personal inventory of crap really important stuff and given away, except some of those items are photo albums.

Photos are important to me and I am not going to get rid of the albums, even if sixty of them are filled with the photos you take of your first born.

Swimmers, Pictures and Bat Mitzvahs

Saturday rolls around and my daughter is flipping through a stack of photo albums, soft giggles lead to cackling and I know she is staring at old photos from junior high or high school.

I tell her we are pulling out the boxes because we need to get rid of stuff and aren’t supposed to stare at pictures.

She tells me how silly she thinks we look in some of our school photos and I tell her one day her kids will tell her that the ‘V’ for Victory’ hand gesture kids make now will be seen as dated and stupid too.

“Whatever dad, you and your 80s talk.”

I smile and tell her to just wait.

“OMG dad, you weren’t kidding. You had hair and you were ripped.”

I walk back over and see pictures from my swim team days. She has come across photos I had forgotten about and for a moment I go back 30 years.

“Dad, my Bat Mitzvah is coming next year. I want you to get in shape for it.”

I look at her and ask her if I embarrass her. I have that dad bod, it is not what I want but it is not nearly as bad as a bunch of the guys.

She tells me she isn’t embarrassed by how I look physically but wants to make sure I am healthy and around for as long as possible.

It is not a ridiculous comment or request and when you look at pictures of me at 17 and compare them to the present, well, I look like a slug.

But her words hit me more because of my own ego and feelings about where I am at now and because sometimes I look at family photos and shake my head because I am not pleased with what I see.

That never used to be me.

Truth is there are about six people whose opinion might matter to me about this, but the guy at the top of the list is the one I see staring back at me.

783 Reasons Why Family Photos Make Me Crazy

The 17 long time readers will tell you there probably aren’t anywhere close to 783 reasons why family photos make me crazy and they would be right.

At the moment there is one major one and several smaller ones.

The smaller ones are pretty basic, got a teenager who doesn’t like taking pictures and tries to avoid being in them whenever he can.

Add in the need to organize things and to find a way to integrate the digital stuff with film shots that have been printed and you have the highlights of the minor ones.

What Does That Leave?

It leaves a lack of photos taken on vacations and trips we have taken because we haven’t done as much of that as I want to.

Haven’t done as much as I did when I was a kid and it bothers me.

The reason is simple…it is financial.

I just haven’t had the cash to do what I have wanted to do with the sort of frequency that would make me happy.

It is part of why I have taken a very active role in changing things so that this is not an ongoing theme.

The good news is that if I can make this happen the way I think and hope to it will be a series of things they remember.

And one day when we talk about the last ten years or so I’ll tell them about how we did a lot when they were really little and then went through a more challenging decade or so.

I’ll tell them to look at the time that followed and smile because there will be a series of good memories tied into it.

My focus is on collecting experiences because those can’t be taken from you, but possessions, well they can.

And now my friends I am off to exercise, got to do something about getting myself in better shape. Not because of the pictures but because of me, because I want it.

That is the key in most things, wanting it and a willingness to do what it takes to get it.