Love letter to my high school darkroom

I was holding my camera. It's a 5 year old canon digital camera, nothing special, not one of those dslr things. Just the run of the mill this is what I have. It has a nice heft to it, though, like a good 35 mm would, and it brought me back to another camera I owned, my father's, that I used throughout my senior year of high school in a photojournalism class. My dad had a set of macro lenses and I used them to take a picture of the laces of my converse all-star lace up high tops, back when they came in black, cream, and red. I had a pair of black and a pair of red. Back when no one wore them. But after the point when basketball players wore them. I placed 3rd in a regional school competition in photography with that picture.

And I was in this photojournalism class, with this camera with quirks--you couldn't use the timer anymore, for instance. You had to load film just-so. But it worked and I learned how to take a photo.

Maybe it's making an order for art class, the classes I teach on a volunteer basis, but for the first time ever I got to go through a catalog and order things. Buying things in bulk--maybe that's it. Or maybe it was Terri Gross interviewing Trent Reznor on Fresh Air. But suddenly I'm sitting in that darkroom in 1991, transferring film from my camera to the canisters where it will develop. Fumbling in darkness, hoping I don't drop anything necessary on the floor where I'll never find it. And then after developing it, going out into the bright classroom and using the little black machine to roll another canister of film off the bulk roll Mr. Sarver kept in a black bag.

I realized that more than cell phones vs. land lines, more than microwave ovens, more than the internet, actually, that this is the difference for me, the difference between me and now. My kids will never roll film or develop photos in a dark room, sitting on those metal stools that are never balanced right, chatting with John or trying not to chat with Heather, hoping we didn't expose anything, being trusted to do this task. They'll never take that film canister and take pictures at some ultra-boring volleyball game or NHS induction.

We don't have to make our own butter or know how to butcher pigs, either, and this isn't a "oh, these kids today don't understand" kind of thing I'm going for. I just realized, looking down at my camera in the front seat in front of me, that this is my version of my father's tooling around with a British sports car. I know how to do this thing that I never need to know how to do anymore.

But like a love letter from someone you've broken up with and never see anymore, it's nice to think about.