What a Life!

I’m having a crisis. [Said with a tremor in my voice.]

Steve’s Dad has a 1940-something grain truck he wants to sell. Of course, he needs a good picture of it in order to list it online. But it needs to be cleaned up first.

This Thursday and Friday, Steve is going to be working up near his Dad’s farm, so he’s planning to spend the night there in order to not have to spend two extra hours driving back and forth.

Steve told me this morning that he wants to take the camera with him. As in, the only camera we own. The one I use to take pictures all the time. The Rebel XTi.

He says his Dad is all gung-ho about cleaning up the truck this week since Steve can bring the camera with him when he goes up there and take pictures of it.

Now I can almost count on one hand the number of pictures Steve has taken with this camera. Not that he doesn’t know how to use a camera. He was one of the photographers for his high school yearbook, taking pictures from a 60’s version SLR camera. As in, everything manual. In fact, I would love for him to take pictures with it because then I could be in some of them. But he doesn’t seem to be interested. So I am the one who takes all the pictures with it.

You must understand, Steve’s grandma and his aunt both have cameras. Eighties versions of the point-and-shoot. They store them in the boxes they came in. With a rubber band around. Manual included. Every time we get them together, they get them out, take two or three pictures, and then put them away in the boxes until the next time. Their cameras even travel in the little boxes that they came in – I know that, because that’s how they bring them to our house.

I, on the other hand, take pictures almost every day. In fact, I looked this morning, and I got that camera last year on August 8. As of today, I am just a few pictures shy of 6600 pictures. That’s well over 500 pictures a month. Nearly twenty pictures a day. Average.

So to them it’s no big deal for me to send the camera with Steve up to the farm. To me? I guess if he cut off my arm and took it with him, that might be worse. Or leg. [Trying to be positive here.]

And yes, Thursday and Friday may be two days when I don’t take any pictures. Or they may be two days when I catch some really great ones. I don’t know.

Do I send it? Or do I hide it, tell Steve I lost it, and then stand guard in front of where I put it?*

I’m having a crisis. [Do you hear the tremor in my voice?]

*****

*Actually, I don’t operate that way. I would simply refuse to let him take it along. That’s just what I would feel like doing.