Testament

My husband's cousin, Julia (not her real name), got a new camera for her last birthday. It was one of those snazzy cameras that has slick tricks like making the entire picture black and white except for whatever color you program it to pop out. Although it doesn't have "double-chin reduction" (which I believe would make an excellent feature), it does have an amazing storage capacity. Julia took over 400 pictures with her new camera. Then she promptly lost it. Not only was she completely bummed, but she lost all (over) 400 special memories captured with that camera. Also, she's a scrapbooker, and you know how they are about their pictures.

Anyway, some random guy who works at TGIFridays was fine-cleaning a grimy old booth when he found, tucked between the cushion and the back, said snazzy camera. He knew that this was an expensive camera and guessed she'd be missing it. So random TGIFridays-dude-turned-sleuth went on a mission to return the camera to its rightful owner. After viewing all (over) 400 pictures, he had quite a, well, picture of Julia's life. And so, in detective work that would have made Sir Arthur Conan Doyle proud, he pieced together the clues.

From the photos in her camera, he surmised that the owner probably had three or four kids (most likely four, although one of the kids seemed to be pictured quite a bit less than the other three) and that they were aged 8, 6, 4 and 3 (he was spot on by the way). By viewing some photos of a basketball game in which the scoreboard was displayed, he guessed where the owner was from. He knew that the owner's family had taken a summer trip to Michigan and a fall trip (sans kids) to New York. Armed with that, and a few more details, he emailed the school district of the small town where he guessed she was from. Someone in the school district recognized all of the descriptors and proceeded to email one of the churches in the small town. The pastor of the church is Julia's father, my husband's uncle. Once he saw the email, he let Julia, who actually lives about two hours away from the small town, know that someone had found her camera. At long last, Julia (feeling a little creeped out, but grateful) was reunited with her camera and (over) 400 photos. Further, she resolved to take more pics of the less-featured child.

That got me to thinking....what would my camera say about me or my life? Or, what would my credit card statement say about me? It would easily reveal that I am frequently running late in the morning & have to make a breakfast stop at McDonald's or Bruegger's (plain cream cheese on a plain bagel...go ahead and say it, but I love it). Mostly it would scream, "I LOVE TARGET!"

So how about you? What would your credit card or camera say about you?