The lost roll

'Lost' is such a delightful adjective, conjuring up misty sensations of mystery, wistfulness, and regret. I do not use it lightly here. Indeed I am sufficiently devastated to go off and write poems about it~

Where, oh where, is my lost roll?
I thought my col-lec-tion was whole.
But now, alas, I see my lack.
I wish I'd gotten my roll back.

~Or maybe not.

Anyway, over the last few days I've taken on the project of sorting and filing my pictures. This is a task I've neglected for the past few years, merely stuffing envelopes of developed film in a drawer and vowing to get to them later. Later has now come upon me. The legendary nesting instincts, which never struck beforehand to tip me off that I was about to give birth, have now struck full force, and I've been catching up on long-dead projects with a vengeance. Ideally I would like to enter all my pictures in a scrapbook, with intelligible captions and complimentary stickers. But I must pragmatically face the brutal fact that I am never going to get around to scrapping twenty+ rolls of film, save that happy thought for the wedding album, and simply resolve to slip the photos into boring but acid-free sleeve albums.

It's not at easy as it sounds, actually. First I had to look through all the rolls and sort chronologically. Then I had to place the photos in albums in a well-thought-out order. Straight chronology won't work here, since I need to take into account such aesthetic considerations as horizontal v. vertical shots, appropriate sequence, etc., all while maintaining a reasonable sense of historic accuracy. Each time I approach the goal, I discover another stash of pictures that someone has sent me, which now need to be worked into the books. The one drawback of sleeve albums is that there's no easy insert. I figure I've moved each picture about three times now.

But it was nearing completion, and I was reviewing the books to double-check everything when I noticed an eight-month gap during which no pictures document events in my life. I am fairly obsessive about taking pictures, so the thought that I simply didn't find anything worth snapping for eight months at a time is ludicrous. What happened to me between my post-graduation trip to Arkansas in May 2000 and the inaugural ball in January 2001?

I know my grandfather died in June 2000. I know I started a new job in July 2000. I know Darren and Sara got married in September 2000. I know student life was...alive and well, shall we say...during October-November 2000. I know I attended the office Christmas party in December 2000. But why don't I have any pictures of all this?

It finally dawned on me that I lost the roll of film. So just like that, a huge chunk of my life is missing. Now all I have of that time are memories...

All right, it's not so bleak as all that. Considering that I got my first camera at age seventeen, there's a much bigger chunk of my life missing off the front of my albums. But still.