The only thing that can clear a room faster than someone
yelling
”
fire,
”
is a mom waving a handful of freshly developed photographs. It’s
a little known wartime strategy, but all General MacArthur really
needed to do to stop advancing enemy troops during World War II was
to place a mother on the front line armed with 14 sets of slides
and a projector.
The only thing that can clear a room faster than someone yelling “fire,” is a mom waving a handful of freshly developed photographs. It’s a little known wartime strategy, but all General MacArthur really needed to do to stop advancing enemy troops during World War II was to place a mother on the front line armed with 14 sets of slides and a projector.
Since the first day my children were born, I loved recording every moment on film. “So what,” I would tell my family and friends, “if our son thinks my name is ‘cheese’ and can’t look me straight in the eye without squinting. I am creating memories.”
Then somebody would invariably add, “And gathering evidence for their years in psychotherapy.”
Whenever I go through this phase, and I start sharing my memories with dinner guests, the mail carrier, trick-or-treaters and anyone else who comes within 15 feet of my front door, my house becomes quieter than a ghost town. Word gets out. Solicitors, while passing my driveway, have broken into a sprint and pretended they were on their daily jog. Even religious missionaries shout their doctrine through a bullhorn from the car.
“Why don’t Bob and Betty come over anymore?” I asked my husband one day while barbecuing dinner and feeling lonely.
“Nine rolls of the field trip our son took when he was in the third grade,” he said.
“What about Frank and Karen?”
“Eleven rolls of our son’s fifth-grade field trip.”
“Rob and Sue?”
“Two rolls of our daughter when she was a baby, where she was rolling over, followed by four rolls of napping pictures,” he said. “The birth video finished them off.”
I wound a new role of film in my camera. “What are you saying?”
“Our children are more photographed than Yosemite,” he said. “And most people would rather climb Mount Everest during a blizzard in their socks than sit through a roll of somebody else’s family pictures.”
I shook my head in disbelief at his wee faith in humanity while I e-mailed 148 recent photos of my kids to my 38 of my closest friends. Hey, it’s only fair. I estimate I have 27,654 pictures of my friends’ children in my computer.
Years ago, when our daughter was about 1 year old, I spent the better part of a day pasting more photographs into my children’s albums. I cut fancy edges and used stencils between changing diapers and making meals. When I was finished I had a masterpiece of maternal devotion, a tribute of my unconditional love. I proudly showed my triumph to my husband when he came home from work.
“That’s great!” he shouted. “We could bring it to the company party next Saturday night, take it out about 10:45 and we’ll be home by 11. Good thinking, hon!”
Granted, he was right, but so what if people would rather wrestle man-eating lions with their bare hands than see my children’s pictures?
My photographs let me revisit my children taking their first steps, eating their first meal, heading off to a soccer practice or giving our dog his first bath. Pictures are worth a thousand words, but to a mother, they are priceless.
Debbie Farmer is a humorist and a mother holding down the fort in California, and the author of “Don’t Put Lipstick on the Cat.” You can reach her at familydaze@oasisnewsfeatures.
com.
