I’d guess that some of you other folks occasionally check in on Facebook to find out what’s going on with your family. That seems to be where most engagements, pregnancies, births, and precious pet moments are typically announced these days. Used to be, back in old geezer times, your nearly grown kids would call you up on a hard-wired telephone and let you know about the important events in their lives. Was part of the definition of close relationships and all. If you got the news firsthand there was a good chance you and your kid were at least on speaking terms. Maybe even, like, you know, “close.”

Nowadays, likely as not, you’ll find out along with their other nine-hundred-and-seventy-six “friends” on Facebook. Or, at least with the other twenty who actually do pay attention to your kids’ posts.

So anyway, I’m on Facebook the other day, checking the obituary section to make sure my siblings and I were still alive and I see one of those “Your Memories from 2017” photo book offers that seem to pop up every now and then. Much to my wife’s surprise, I actually tried to buy the thing but apparently the company is based out of the Netherlands and my credit card companies—all both of them—saw that as suspicious and protected me from my own impulses. Tried again this morning with another company and the same thing happened again. After I’d spent an hour editing…

But during those two failed attempts to capture the best of my life from the previous year, I discovered something: we had a bunch of really great memories from last year! Trips to cool places, precious time with family and friends, visits, holidays and hikes, and lots of times with folks we likes! As I flipped through the one-hundred-and-eighty-eight pages of pictures, I was reminded of a whole big bunch of those great times we’d had.

Apparently, I didn’t post a lot of pictures of the bummer moments, the disappointments, the aggravations and irritations. As a result, those weren’t the things that filled my online, terrific offer of hardcover preservation at an incredible limited time only low price. Just a few hundred shots of lots of people I love, beautiful places and interesting things. It really felt good to look back through those good times and memories.

So maybe if I used the same sort of filter on the things I stash in my analog memory bank, I might find ferreting through that more fun, too? Might feel better, act better, and even play nicer in the sand box. It’s sort of a visual form of “whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are honest, whatever things are… think on these things…”

It’s healthier and more fun than that other stuff.

H. Arnett
1/25/18