One Hour Photo

It’s cold here. Oh is it cold here. It’s a Friday night and I could’ve easily gone out with the girls but, frankly, just too damn cold.

Now that the C’mas holidays have come and gone we’re onto the next phase of movies to be shown on non-network channels. It appears to be the ramp-up to Valentine’s Day. It’s rom-com time on cable TV. So, trapped inside on a freezing cold Friday night with sole control of the remote I found myself watching a Sandra Bullock flick from 1998; Hope Floats.

1998 doesn’t seem all that long ago. I mean I remember this movie (as much as I remember any movie, not really being a movie person and all that). But there’s this scene in the movie when Sandra Bullock is looking for a job in her old hometown and she ends up working at a one hour photo lab. My first job was working at a similar type of photo lab, it was years ago and I thought it was the greatest job…it was the greatest job for a 16 year old. I made a lot of money for a kid and it seemed like exciting, important work. I was printing out people’s wedding photos and graduation photos and holiday photos, I had a hand in making the memories of strangers. I was 16 quite a long time ago now.

But 1998, that doesn’t seem that long ago to me. Yet there was Sandra Bullock struggling at the helm of a one hour photo shop’s printing machine.

Now this may seem like a random connection but times change. That machine was relevant just 12 years ago. Not long at all really, right?

I just read an article in The New Yorker about the US Constitution. It was eye-opening not least because it spoke to change, just like that obsolete machine in “Hope Floats”. The article talked about how few people actually know what’s in the Constitution and I realized that I was one of them. We think we know what it says but we don’t.

Even more interesting than pointing out our collective ignorance was pointing out our collective resistance to change. The Tea Party movement claims to be there to support the US Constitution and some have even offered up their own plain English interpretations of it. But what does this get us? What does it prove? I respect the founding fathers. I love that I live in America; that I grew up here. I really do love being American. Ben Franklin is mentioned in The New Yorker article delicately pointing out that what they drafted may or may not be the most perfect foundation for the new country.

It’s more than 200 years since that document started its journey. Times have changed. There have been big changes and little changes but there have been changes. I’m sure that those founding fathers really did have the best intentions at heart but even that thought gave me pause; founding fathers. Would we have that today? Women are captains of industry all over the place I’m pretty sure there wouldn’t be the just men at that table if it were happening today.

When that document, the US Constitution, was drafted boy oh boy were things different. Women weren’t CEO’s and African-Americans weren’t called that and they sure as shit weren’t President of the United States of America. But times change. Thank the heavens up above…times do change. The Tea Party doesn’t want to embrace these many and varied changes, some good, some not so good and many that the jury is still out on…but they’re happening anyway.

When this group of people want their constitution back I’m not so sure they even know what their asking for and if they do, well, does it really fit into a vastly different society? I believe that the people brave enough to form this new country were just that, brave, but brave people embrace change, they know that nothing stays the same and they work at making the changes that are inevitable be good and valuable changes.

So, I don’t miss one hour photo shops. I love digital cameras, love the freedom to snap pictures whenever I want on my phone, that phone that goes everywhere with me instead of a phone tethered to a wall in my house. Taking pictures, making those memories, used to require remembering to buy film and batteries, remembering to bring the camera along and then after all was said and done, remembering to drop that film off at the one hour shop and hoping that you got a few good shots on that roll of film.

Not anymore, just click away as long as you’ve got battery power on your droid or iPhone you’ve got the chance to capture a memory. I love it; change that makes me happy.

I want to read the Constitution now, I hear it’s just 4,400 words, I typed almost that much in an e-mail last week. I want all of the tea partiers to read it too. Then I want them to think about all the changes they’ve seen in their years on the earth. Some good, some not so good and some, well, who knows just yet, but the point is that those men who wrote that document more than 200 years ago couldn’t even imagine a one hour photo shop no less the disappearance of them all in one lifetime (mine).

SMILE, SAY CHEESE!