We are gathered here today to mourn the fact that we will no longer be able to gather around a friend’s vacation pictures set expertly into a photo book. Instead, we will have to huddle around a computer screen and flip through Facebook pictures, waiting for them to load. Forgive me friends, but maybe we shouldn’t all be seeing the intimate pics of your wife in her bikini? Perhaps, you should have only kept that for your eyes and the photo developer at the pharmacy? Maybe next time you might discriminate what photos you put on the internet. Simply put them in a photo album. You can always frame your favorite money shots for later.
I regret to inform you that the slideshow projector could not make it today. It too, has bitten the dust. Or rather, it has been covered in it.
Truthfully, I believe this world has lost an art form. The ability to set the right pictures next to each other to tell a story. Circumspectly lifting the plastic flap to slip them inside without dog-earring the picture. Your baby book can’t be brought down from a shelf anymore, it’s taken off the hard drive. You don’t point and laugh at a particularly embarrassing photo, you like it, and you “LOL.” Or at least you say that you are “loling,” but really I think you are just chuckling darkly in your basement.
Loved ones, don’t fret. Pictures and photographs will always have a place in our over-sharing hearts. As long as our friends still shoot milk out of their noses, someone will be there to document it. As long as we take vacations to the ocean, we will feel compelled to take pictures of it, even though we have seen it before. And finally, as long as we feel good in our clothing and in our own skin, we will take the all-important selfie.
Long live the photograph.
Please proceed to the rotary phone’s house for refreshments after the service.
Amen.
Bailey Dailey 