One of my New Year's resolutions was to organize the thousands of loose pictures I have accumulated over the years into an album or two. Not a scanned, computerized, iPhoto album, but a hand-held, many-paged, store-bought, old-fashioned picture album! I thought it would be exciting, reliving those memories caught frozen in past times. Was I ever wrong! It turned out to be a tiresome, frustrating job trying to decide which photos to keep and which to leave out. Should I keep the ones where I look great but other people don't look so hot? No problem. I kept the ones that starred me! As the album began taking shape, organized as best I could into several thematic sections, a startling fact about albums hit me! Photo albums are liars! Just take a look at one! Everyone is smiling and happy! All the kids are as cute as can be! Everyone is frozen in time--ageless. No Dorian Grey age progression in the pictures regardless of how long one keeps them! As they were seen by the camera's eye at the moment of the flash--so they will remain on the album page, and in the case of departed ones (for whatever reason)--also in our mind's darkroom. Then I realized another reason why albums are lying! During happy occasions there is always a camera handy---at weddings, at birthday parties, on vacation trips---ready at a moment's notice to snap a happy face or a happy scene! But where is the camera when my wife and I are arguing, when she's throwing shoes at me, or breaking up the furniture! Nowhere! And where is the camera and where are the pictures of the kids when they are throwing a tantrum, or throwing up on their new clothes, or hitting their sister with a plastic, baseball bat, or biting her brother in a fit of anger! Nowhere! That's why I say photo albums lie! They don't picture the whole truth! LIARS!
