1,000 words

Someday, when I grow up and get a big boy job, I'm going to sit at my laptop and have a party. "The Great Untagging." I've been tagged in 533 photos of Facebook (lots more, actually. These 533 are those my mother is least likely to find objectionable...). It's not that I'm doing anything bad in the pictures; mostly, I'm making silly faces and generally being a college student. Even so, they probably aren't the kind of pictures that a professional person wants following them around. Actually, I'm not just wild about some of them now, --like the shirtless Christmas card photos-- but that's just part of the deal when you're an undergrad with silly friends and a little free time.


There's a part of me that will be sad when it comes time to remove my name from all those photos. I'm not ashamed of any of them; in fact, it makes me glad to flip through them and remember the situations they capture. Even the unflattering ones. Even so, the true measure of an important photo in this digital day, is the photo you like enough to print. Of all the 533 pictures of me on Facebook, maybe 10 of them have ever been printed. Fewer than 100 of the 5,000+ photos on my hard drive have ever been sent to the printer. A facebook photo is cheap. A printed photo is a treasure.

If you're like me, you sometimes marvel at how well documented your life is. Cameras everywhere, photos on every phone, blog, profile, and laptop. At 22 years old, though, I'm coming late to this party: I have a nephew who at the ripe old age of 13 months has probably had his picture taken more than most A-list celebrities. The child is a rock star. I'm generally pretty far removed from the world of child-rearing, so I had no idea: there's the newborn photo shoot, the birht announcement, the one-, two-, three-, four-, five-, and six-month photo shoot. There's the mom-and-son session, the family photo, the dad-and-son shoot, the Christmas card, the birthday invitation, the first Halloween, Thanksgiving, Valentine’s Day, Veteran’s Day, the first Black History Month, and the first Pearl Harbor Day. The first tooth, step, laugh, solid meal, intelligible word, haircut, and boo-boo. He had a personal DVD slideshow at his first birthday, which played on a loop near his three over stuffed photo albums. He might as well have his own facebook, for all the albums devoted to him.

Then there are the prints. Crazy as I think it all is, I can’t really complain about those, because they come to me in the mail every month or so and I just can’t resist oooh-ing at his pudgy little cheeks. Every picture finds its place, either on a wall, tucked in a book, or in my wallet. The printed picture is maybe the most powerful piece of paper anyone is every given, because it simply cannot be thrown away.

What kind of a monster gets a picture of his nephew, smiles nostalgically, and chucks it in a bin? We’re talking serious staying power. At the bottom line, it’s a 20 cent card. But it feels like so much more. We shake our heads in confusion when we remember the people in bygone days who refused to allow picture taking for fear that part of their soul would leave them. What a silly idea!

Not so fast. You try throwing a photo of your dear grandmother into the rubbish bin—see if you don’t feel like a monster. We attribute a measure of personhood, of attachment, to printed pictures. They’re like money—some terrible offense if discarded.

Looking up at the wall next to my desk, I’ve just discovered that I don’t have a single print of me and my nephew together. I’m headed to Texas next week for a visit—four days ought to be enough for 1 or 2 (hundred) shots.

P.S. If a picture’s really worth a thousand words (even though I think they're actually worth a lot more) then here’s a few to round us out:

Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Paper Pictures Forever.

A Page Immune to Fire

Most of the things we commit to paper are as temporal and disposable as the pages themselves.  Notes to ourselves, yesterday's candy wrappers, a newspaper rendered irrelevant by the passing of one day.  Tomorrow's trash.

It's interesting, isn't it, that "paper" in the hyper-plural sense of the word is invaluable to the basic functioning of our whole world, but the thing itself--the page in my hands--is wholly temporary.  Worth next to nothing.
Not everything we commit to paper is so fleeting.  In fact, some pieces of paper are so important that they come to define who we are.

The Constitution of the United States was drafted in September 1787, and declared by a three-year process of ratification to be the supreme law of the land.  In our time, when a single piece of legislation can fill 2,000 pages, the Constitution is surprisingly short (in fact, it's the shortest federal constitution in use anywhere in the world), and remarkably broad.  It establishes a framework, defines the government's most basic roles, and leaves the work of specific governance to the wisdom to the discretion of the next generation's leaders.

Our Constitution is the oldest in the world.  The Union is young, but this document which holds it together has endured far longer than any like it.

Of course, our reverence for the original draft of the Constitution is largely nostalgia--the Union would still stand if, by some extraordinary confluence of events, a moth snuck its way under the shining-green bullet-proof glass.  But even this, in the larger context of history, is signficant--the Constitution exists all over the place

I carry a paper copy of the Constitution in my schoolbag.  It was given to me by a professor of whom I am particularly fond, as a great instructor and a cherished advisor.  Bearing my ill-informed margin notes and uneven hi-lites, it goes everywhere I go.  How many through story have lived under a regime so transparent as to reproduce the law for everyone to see and hold?

It's an important piece of paper.  Indeed, it is a leaf which has sustained, encouraged, and protected our collective development for over 200 years. 

By comparison, how pathetic is that post-it note sitting next to your computer?