Photos not taken

I was looking at various pictures of trick-or-treat candy posted on blogs last month and thinking that when I was growing up nobody ever would have bothered to take photographs of that. The costumes sure, but not the candy. It was just too mundane to waste film on. But I wish I had a picture of my childhood candy hauls. I wish I had pictures of a lot of things.

13 photographs I wish I had taken when I had the chance

1. Our Halloween candy spread out all over the floor.

2. My Mom pregnant. She had 11 babies. This means she was pregnant for more than 8 years of her life. How is it possible we have very few pictures of that?

3. Ditto for (discreet) pictures of my mother nursing her babies.

4. Or me nursing my babies for that matter. I guess it’s not too late for that one.

5. My friend in High School who could stack 7 Oreos in his mouth. Nobody believes me when I tell them this. Dang I wish I had some photographic evidence.

6. Me, swinging upside down on the uneven parallel bars formed by the branches of my parents’ apple tree. I was going to be the next Nadia Comaneci. That tree is gone now. And let’s just say I’m a little…less flexible.

7. My old piano teacher. I want to know if her beehive hairdo was as tall and shellac-ed as I remember it. How did she sleep at night?

8. The various cars I rode in or have driven that have since gone to that great parking lot in the sky – the yellow Dasher with the gaping hole in the floor, the family Stationwagon before it died an ignoble death at the driveup window at Arctic Circle, and the VW Vanagon in which I had to take my first driving test (and flunked because I could not parallel park the mammoth, stickshift beast).

9. More than one (!) picture of us standing in front of the World Trade Center when Ken and I visited New York in 1992.

10. The orchards that used to be all around our house but have now become houses and shopping plazas (one of which is called “The Orchards” as if that makes up for ripping out all those trees. Sure, let’s fill in the Grand Canyon but we’ll replace it with a resort called “The Canyon” to compensate.)

11. “Before” photos of the first house Ken and I bought. We did the whole Extreme Home Makeover, but without the bulldozers, Ty Pennington, or loads of volunteers with cash. We took lots of pictures after we were done, but guess who forgot to take pictures before we started.

12. When the Olympics came to Utah in 2002, I took a few shots of the torch. That’s it. The torch. As if I couldn’t go online and find 800 other pictures of the torch that look just like mine. Why didn’t I take pictures of the massive sea of bodies that flooded our state for 2 weeks – the festive throngs of visitors who filled every nook, cranny and overpriced hotel room in Salt Lake Valley? Oh yeah, maybe it’s because we were home watching it all on TV.

13. I wish I had pictures of certain rooms where I’ve spent lots of time over the years – the primary room in the church where I first learned to sing “Give Said the Little Stream,” the choir room in my old High School where we’d go to sluff class (sorry Mom), the cafeteria at Penn State where they made the world’s best provolone tuna melts. The images of these places in my mind are all a bit fuzzy around the edges. But nobody bothers to take pictures of rooms. We’re too busy living in them.

If you want to leave your own “photo not taken” in the comments, I’d love to hear what you have to say. Or just wave hello. That’s fine too.

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