Fun With Scanners

When I was forced to replace my recently deceased iBook last week, I figured, what the hell. I was already dropping a little more money than I had budgeted for the first quarter of the year; why not spend a little more.

So I bought a scanner.

I’ve been thinking about a scanner for a long time. Photography has always been the closest thing to art that I have been interested in. As a result, I have boxes and boxes of photos, going back to the mid 70s, when I was just a little boy with a Polaroid One-Step.

The pictures are slowly fading, so to save the literal snapshots of my life, I want to digitize them. Then, instead of boxes and boxes of fading pictures, I’ll have disks and disks of data that will sit on a shelf. I guess that’s better.

Anyway, won’t it be fun to make this a community project!

So we begin with this photo that I found in the 1986 box. 1986 as in 21 years ago.



I was about to go into my junior year in high school, and I worked as a camp counselor for the group of 4-year-old boys.

As I look at this picture, several significant things pop out.

First, I am having trouble realizing that these 4-year-olds are now in their mid-20s. I work with people in their mid-20s. The woman with whom I am smitten is mid-20s. These guys cannot be mid-20s. It hurts to think that way.

Also, there’s me in the picture. I’m the tall guy in the back. In addition to 21 years ago, this is 35 pounds ago. How did skinny teenage John turn into middle aged John?

Finally, there’s the hot pink shirt I’m wearing. Please remember, the mid 80s were when Miami Vice was popular. If Don Johnson could wear hot pink, I could too. That’s all we’ll say about that.

I remember a few of the names. In the front row on the left was Timmy Woehr. A couple over from him was Zach Carson. In the middle is a kid named Sam something, a down the row a bit is Steven D’Amico and I think the kid at the end was named Andrew. In front of me are Ted Bullock and Eyal Ebel.

I have no idea what happened to any of these kids. I’m pretty sure they’re really still in middle school somewhere. There’s no way they can be any older than that.

I'll have more trips down memory lane soon... if my ego can take it.