Behind the Camera

“Here’s an old picture of us,” I said, passing Bud a family photo that I found in a pile of stuff. “We’ve got everyone but Philip there.”

“Where am I?” he asked.

“Behind the camera,” I replied.

It’s true. Bud took a lot of the family pictures when we were on vacation. If we didn’t snag a passer-by, he was out of the big group shot. He would appear in the just-a-Zaengle family picture that my brother or brother-in-law would take, but the everyone shot often didn’t include everyone.

Who is in the picture (and who isn’t) — just two of the clues about what year it was taken.

I’m in the center, behind Helen who is holding Laurel. Helen couldn’t possibly do that today because Laurel is now taller than Helen. Laurel’s age, though, tells me that it’s probably 2004.

Mary is wearing her Matt Kenseth Dewalt Tools hat. That tells me that we were in our NASCAR phase — everyone had a driver that they followed. Mary liked Matt Kenseth because she was fascinated with power tools; we had recently completed an addition on our house and she had seen an awful lot of yellow tools lying around.

Philip isn’t there. He must have been at college.

Karl’s cheeks are quite pink. He’s either sunburnt (unlikely, since no one else is), or had just been running around (likely, he’s a little boy). We, as a family, have this pink-cheek thing going on whenever we exercise.

My hair is short and I’m not wearing a jumper. That tells me a lot about me at the time.

But the man behind the camera, had his hair starting turning gray yet? I wish he was there beside me to complete the picture. Time to shuffle through more piles of photos to find out.