Kodak Moments

-Joe Tornatore, age four

I have to embrace the optimistic people left at work. They came up with this wonderful bonding activity of inviting colleagues to bring in a childhood picture. The pictures were posted anonymously on a bulletin board to garner dartboard guesses in a Whose Who of Social Work. Anything that can depressurize a think tank is worth its weight in gold bullion. Most people brought in black and white dinosaur pictures. I singled out this 1966 colorized gem from Christmas morning to help conceal my age and identity.

While scanning the bulletin board of baby pin-ups, it reminded me that we were all glorious human beings before being tainted by bureaucracy. All of these people with their whole lives before them wound up in the same vocation. I marveled at the commonality. The bulletin board provided a time stamped photo essay. I saw white picket fences and intact families, porcelain smiles and glass slippers, dreams of success and hopes for Prince Charming.

As I stared at my bike riding picture among the flock, the future seemed brighter than what it turned out to be. The world was innocent as the driven snow and I wanted it back. Dark shades have long replaced my rose-colored glasses. Only faint glimpses of this person emerge when I drop my guard. Tarnished by age, stress, and experience, this picture makes me long for simpler times in a less complicated world.

As writers will do, I sat down to explore this jaded feeling about life. There are times that my strength has less air than the compression in my bike tires. A deflating thought, that pretty much sums it up. After typing this analogy, a stranger awkwardly riding a bicycle stops in front of my house. My head turns to the side as I quizically watch him dismount off of a rather large bicycle. He pinches each bike tire in a check of the air pressure. The bicyclist then leaves my windowed field of vision as quickly as he came. I exhale. My trembling hands return to a normal typing position as I wonder about a pipeline to a collective consciousness. My analogy was poignant enough before the theatre arrived! There was no need to send in the clowns.

Irony aside, it was tough terrain riding a tricycle through a bi-level house. From this unleveled first ride, I became a participant in this challenging existence we call life. I can only conclude that life is a tough road to travel and that we must constantly strive to do our best. Just peering out my window at the world...it appears no easier of a ride for anyone else. Tired or not, sometimes we need to pause to appreciate the very air that we breathe. Otherwise, life would become only disconnected strings of Kodak moments until we aren't part of the big picture at all.