You Turn Away For A Second ...

When I was young, my parents would take me to my mother's parents farm. Grandpa raised pigs. I have two pictures when I was about two years old of me chasing grandpa's piglets. I was not supposed to be doing it; but, as so many times when one of my siblings or I got into trouble, mother would have to take a picture or two of the offending party before she stopped the behavior or cleaned up the mess!

Parenting is a hard business! When parents have a young one, the child can do something in a heartbeat that changes the entire situation. If you are a parent you know exactly what I am talking about! Hopefully, the incident in question does not result in a tragedy of any sort.

My mother took pictures of all of us in situations we should not have been in. But, like I said, she would have to document the situation before cleaning us up. In a lifetime of taking pictures and collecting over seventy photo albums of not only our lives, but of the lives of the people around us. She is currently going through all of these albums and taking out favorites to give to her brothers, sisters, my siblings and her grandchildren. What a wonderful gift!

In early 2006, for some unknown reason, she and I were looking through some of these old photograph albums. We started picking out photos we wanted to keep, and scan to make an online family album. There was no particular reason for it, we just decided to do it. Little did I know the reason for us to do it would appear a couple months later when my father was diagnosed with mesothelioma.

I designed the program for his memorial services and made a collage of some of the pictures we had started scanning just a few months earlier. It appeared on the back cover of his program. Since then, I have made several collages for members of my family to celebrate birthdays, anniversaries and one other life. They were fun to do, therapeutic and enabled me to express my artistic side in another way. I have had several people tell me they look at their collage every once in a while and see a picture they have not noticed before! That is fun. They have also told me other people have commented favorably on their collage.

I wonder what the situation was that allowed this young boy to kiss the snout of this pig? And then, have the wherewithal to snap the photo while the boy was making a new friend?

I have seen this photograph before several years ago. In fact, I use it in a slide show for the opening of conferences. I wonder if the family knows their cute little boy is all over the Internet being used as fodder for adults to laugh at?

As always, I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike