When my granddaughter was born four years ago,\u00a0I put photos of her into every kind of\u00a0photo-saving device – albums,\u00a0scrapbooks, Grandma’s brag book, refrigerator magnet frames, etc.\u00a0 Trouble\u00a0was, I took so many\u00a0photos and received so many, that they started getting ahead of me.\u00a0\u00a0When I want\u00a0to show someone how she’s grown, most often I\u00a0go for\u00a0the\u00a0jpg’s on the computer and attach them to an email.\u00a0\u00a0 It’s\u00a0an extra\u00a0 step to update wallet photos and to continue buying albums to put on the bookshelf, so\u00a0I\u00a0stopped.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now I have\u00a0hundreds\u00a0of pictures\u00a0on my computer.\u00a0 Lord help me if\u00a0this thing ever crashes. I’m thinking I’ll get another flash drive and transfer them.\u00a0 Maybe if, as soon as I put them onto my computer, I also save them to flash drive,\u00a0I’ll be protected.\u00a0<\/p>\n
My little girl\u00a0was visiting me recently and she likes to watch the\u00a0Windows Slideshow Screensaver.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0One day\u00a0I left the computer for a while and when I returned, I found her standing in the doorway reciting,\u00a0as if\u00a0for an\u00a0unseen audience:<\/p>\n
“My birthday party.\u00a0\u00a0 Skyla’s birthday.\u00a0 School.\u00a0 Mommy.\u00a0 Abba.\u00a0 Me and Hammy (that’s me).”<\/p>\n
And on and on.\u00a0 When pictures of her as an infant pop up,\u00a0 she adds\u00a0 a\u00a0story\u00a0from her imagination about what said baby in the photo was thinking,\u00a0i.e.\u00a0“That baby wants to ride my scooter.”\u00a0 She knows the picture is of her, but she enjoys making up her\u00a0“That baby” stories.<\/p>\n
I don’t know how the sequence of slides is determined, but it seems like we get the same ones over and over for a few days and then up comes\u00a0one we haven’t seen before.\u00a0\u00a0I suspect when I add to my endless jpg’s from another source, they reshuffle.\u00a0\u00a0 I recently put in a bunch of vintage pictures.\u00a0 The little one was standing behind me when a new one came up and she asked\u00a0\u00a0“Who’s that?”\u00a0 I told her that is her great-grandmother, that the lady in the photo\u00a0onscreen is my <\/em>mommy.\u00a0 Then I showed her a picture of my parents together.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Next time I found her in the doorway narrating the slideshow, she had\u00a0assimilated\u00a0these\u00a0people (who\u00a0passed away before she was born)\u00a0into her performance.\u00a0 She said,\u00a0like a tour guide, “That’s Hammy’s mommy.\u00a0 That’s Hammy’s Abba.”\u00a0 Then as I walked by, she paused.\u00a0 It must be a work in progress, and she wasn’t ready to reveal it yet.\u00a0 Soon she’ll come up with\u00a0something interesting about them and I’ll be eager to hear\u00a0it.\u00a0 That’s\u00a0something no mere photo album\u00a0can offer.<\/p>\n