Sunday, November 27, 2011

Adventures in the Digital Realm

or On Being a Gen-X'er, Raising a Millenial

Boychild found a disposable camera in my junk drawer. It's there in case of emergencies. What kind of emergencies might necessitate a disposable camera? I have no idea, but I feel better with it there.

After a weekend of teaching him to sew, and then watching him operate on every single stuffed animal in the house (seriously, one poor kitty cat has zero in the way of guts now), I figured he was done making mischief.

I clearly am unschooled in the ways of eleven year old boys.

As I said, he found the disposable camera, and delighted in flashing my eyeballs blind, taking the requisite Myspace arm photo and then shooting randomness in the house. I wish I had cleaned up more.

Now let it be known that I have an entire Flickr set devoted to pictures that boychild takes. He is not new to the idea of photography. He is, however, new to the idea of "old-fashioned photography."

After showing him how a manual flash works, and after he gleefully blinded me repeatedly, and shot avante-garde shots of the coffee table (I kept warning him he had finite amounts of shots...) he turned to me, with about 13 shots left, and asked (while trying to pry the camera body open),

"Okay, how do I see what I shot?"
"Umm, well, you finish the roll, and then we go down to Walgreens, where they process it over a week or so, then you pay for the prints. Also, if you open that case, all your shots are ruined."
"Like ACTUAL prints?!"
"Actual prints."
"But then I have no idea if I took good shots!"
"Welcome to my childhood, son."
"Your childhood was CRAZY!"

2 comments:

  1. Heheheheheh!

    You don't also have an old rotary phone or a record player, do you? My grandkids are probably going to be astounded that I used a laptop, ha.

    Keep posting, chick. I will eventually read!!
    xoxo
    Karin

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  2. I am so old that I remember actual flash cubes. They got hot and you had to wait to unscrew each one from the camera before replacing it. If I recall correctly, each one had four flashes...

    Believe it or not, I'm a Gen X'er, too. And a baby boomer. They should really stop overlapping their years.

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