Picture Day

Day care sent home a letter that Picture day is next week. Now maybe it’s because we have cameras on our phones these days but I started asking myself, do I really need that? Don’t I have three hundred pictures of Boy Wonder in the same pose already? “Oh look! There’s another one of him sleeping. I’m sorry I don’t have any recent ones, this is from a month ago. He looks totally different now.”

Remember when photos were special? It was not that long ago. My Grandma has all of my school photos mounted on her living room wall. My aunt used to have scrapbooking parties at her house. I even remember getting dragged to the Sears Portrait Studio with my 1,345 cousins to take a family photo. That’s how important they used to be. I remember my mom saying “School picture day is coming up. We better get you a haircut. You aren’t wearing that are you? We want you to look nice.” Then, after the whole ordeal was over, we’d have to wait so long for that professional to develop his film that I had forgotten all about it.

Sorry Kodak, we don’t have to wait for you to develop our photos anymore. With the instant gratification of phone cameras, we parents can’t stop taking pictures of our kids. Even the most mundane, everyday things suddenly become historic events we must document for history. “Unbelievable! He smeared avocado on his nose!” Click. “Ah, it was on live mode! Wait, no, Burst Mode! I took fifty shots of that? How do I delete them? Forget it. I’ll just buy more cloud storage.” I think if I showed you all the photos of of my almost two year old, it would take longer than his lifespan to get through them all. On the plus side, if he ever becomes a celebrity, I can retire early by selling my photo library to the tabloids.

Yes, thanks to cell phones, I have more photos of my kid than I’ll ever be able to look at. But we’ll still get his hair cut, probably spend money on a new outfit, and then I’ll buy three hundred pictures of him crying at the camera or picking his nose. Do I need it? No. But will I treasure it? Every day of his life.