Thursday, July 3, 2008

Ah, yes, NOW I see!

My mother-in-law used to take the worst pictures. She and her partner went to France and came back with oodles of pictures for us to see. You had to look at them one a time with her, because other wise you would have no idea what you were looking at. For example, "Oh, this one is the wall outside the hotel where we stayed." No identifying characteristics. It was a BRICK WALL. Or, "Oh, there were the most beautiful flowers just to the left of this picture at Monet's Garden." I am sure there were, but since there were no actual PICTURES of them, I will never know. It was a running joke that they actually forgot their cameras and ran around in their own city taking quick pictures to show the family. Seriously, there were ZERO out of a kabillion identifiable pictures of France.

I was reminded of her "photographic ability" today when Pablo got a hand-me-down super cool view master projector (THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!). He LOVES it. We spent hours in the dark, looking at pictures of space, Toy Story, Finding Nemo, etc. It was awesome. But I have to think that these view master people took a page out of my mother-in-law's book because each description went like this: "You can't see it, but Uniqua (of Backyardigan's fame) is just to the left of Mars." And, "Oh, Bruce (the shark from Finding Nemo) is chasing Tyrone (a Backyardigan) too, but you can't see him in the picture." And, "Why didn't this picture show Tasha (another Backyardigan, are you catching a theme here?) riding on the space shuttle? She is inside there."

Seriously, how could the integrity of all these view master reels be trusted when they fail to display characters that didn't exist when the reels were produced? Some people just can't focus on what is truly important.

Wait a minute! I have it. Maybe my (very intelligent and generally technologically savvy) mother-in-law and these view master photographers were the victims here. Maybe there was a prank played by some very bored employee on the camera making line. Just maybe this very bored individual goofed with some cameras so that they, for example, shot a few feet to the right of where you pointed it. Or failed to display invisible objects that were clearly in the shot. Someone should look into this.

Meanwhile, I am off to go view master some more pictures the Backyardigans are very close to being in.

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