Picture Perfect-NOT!

I've been working on an ongoing project for about three years now...and I can finally celebrate its completion!

Now it's my fault I allowed things to get to this state in the first place - I'm talking about family photos!  I've been throwing them into boxes for forty years and talk about overwhelming!  Wow!  I've been the photographer all those years -turns out I just didn't want to be the family archivist!

There are pictures of the boys, pictures of friends, pictures of the boys' friends, pictures of my folks, my siblings, the in-laws, my co-workers, hubby and I...Family vacations, holidays, trips with friends.  I took a lot of photos!   As a first-time Mom, I couldn't get enough photos of our new addition.  When the second son arrived, the photos were fewer....by the time the third son came, I was lucky to be able to even find the camera-let alone, take pictures!  We joke now that if we can't identify a picture of one of the boys, we put it in the youngest one's stack, because he got so short-changed! (Just kiddin', "youngest one"...)

So my plan was to make an album for each of the boys -now I'm not talking a cute elaborate scrapbook...this is a basic album with different stages in their lives noted...and the remainder of the photos are going into a manila envelope for them to do what they want with them.  Mission accomplished!  My project is complete!

Oh, not so fast!  What, at this stage of my life, am I going to do with the rest of the pictures?  To put them in albums at this late date, seems silly.   When I'm gone, who's going to even want them?   I figure the kids will back a dumpster up to the house and the photo albums will be tossed in the first load.  Maybe I should give the kids more credit...maybe they'll be a bit more sentimental than that.

Remember when the drugstores that developed our photos offered "free doubles"?  How hard would it have been for me to send them to those special people who were in the photos -- or to even just pitch them? Nope, into the box they went.  I guess I thought the relationships were too precious to throw away any evidence of them.  And those cameras in the 90's that produced those long "landscape" photos?  Even if I DID keep up with albums, those pictures wouldn't have fit!  And why, oh, why didn't I mark the backs of the photos with names...or dates...or places?   I struggle to identify some of those faces now- and those who inherit the photos after I'm gone, certainly won't know who they are!

I think today, there should be concern for a dilemma the opposite of mine.  In this world of camera phones and "selfies", is anyone developing their photos anymore?  If not, I have a few hundred you can have.  In forty years, you probably won't be able to identify yours, either!