Better Left Unfound

A picture says more than a thousand words, but which words are these?
-Taeke de Jong

I recall sitting at a set of bleachers surrounding an ice skating rink at the Ober Gatlinburg Ski Lodge in Tennessee. My mother was searching through her camera bag for something. After much digging, removal of items and their eventual return we continued our mountain-high shopping. Before too long our family of four rode the tram back down the mountainside to continue our week-long vacation.

It was some time later when we discovered a film cartridge was missing from the camera bag. A bit of deduction had us speculating it was left up at the ski lodge, but we weren't about to pay for another tram ride or take the cumbersome drive to retrieve it. Especially when we weren't 100% certain it had actually been left at the lodge, given the numerous places we'd visited throughout Gatlinburg. Plus, if it had been left at the lodge, by that time someone would have picked it up or discarded it; we gave it up as a lost cause.

I was twelve or thirteen at the time and sorely disappointed over the loss as the roll contained a photo of yours truly standing alongside a cardboard cut-out of Don Johnson. I was no fan of Johnson's "Miami Vice" television show that was so popular at the time but thought my friends would get a kick out of it. (I'm "dating" myself with that information, aren't I?)

I've always wondered what happened to that roll of film. Did someone pick it up and develop it? Is my kid-mug, smiling alongside a frozen-in-time Don Johnson, tucked away in some stranger's long forgotten drawer?

Which is creepier? A stranger in possession of my lost photos, or photos showing my awkward childhood phase of skewed glasses, braces, pimples and a wild 80's hairdo?

Yikes!

Now couple that with the fact a website, www.ifoundyourcamera.net, has dedicated itself to reuniting lost cameras, film and memory sticks with their owners and I'm bordering on hysteria. From a digital camera dropped in the sand dunes of New Zealand to a memory card found under a shipping pallet in Australia. Once seemingly lost-forever photos are finding their way back to thrilled owners.

At least they are thrilled until the embarrassing photos start to show up on the site. I'm sure you've got a few photos in mind that you'd rather the general public not see, right?

I've perused the photos posted at the site with my breath held for the moment when my extremely un-photogenic youthful self, smiling brilliantly alongside cardboard cutout "Sonny Crockett" in his pink tee-shirt and white pantsuit, emerges.

Sometimes, some things are better left "unfound".

Bethany J. Royer-DeLong is currently entrenched at home fighting the good war against the gimmes and the I-don't-wannas. She blogs recklessly, as all mothers of children under the age of six should, and has been working on that "supposed" great American novel, times a dozen. You can visit her at motherofthemunchkins.blogspot.com and email her at broyerdelong@yahoo.com