Get those flash bulbs ready

Resslin' Around

Innocent waves of the hands are followed by numerous flashes from cameras in the crowd. It is the second-grade colonial fair, and parents are anxious to get their pictures.

A year ago, I would have scoffed at these people. It's the second-grade colonial fair, not a high-school graduation, so why are these people elbowing each other to get a picture of the kid signing while dressed as George Washington?

Grow up, people, I thought back then.

But a funny thing happened to me four months and five

days ago. I became a parent. I'm now one of them.

A year ago, I would have laughed silently at the camera-toting parents taking pictures from the back of the gym. "They'll never turn out," I'd say about the pictures.

Now, only a year later, watching a parent run out of batteries just before their son, dressed as Paul Revere, bursts into a chorus of "Yankee Doodle Dandy" almost makes me cry.

Things change when you become a parent, and I'm not talking about suddenly knowing what is on television at 3 a.m. When the baby is born, you immediately should buy stock in Kodak, despite the stock's plummeting in recent days.

You find yourself toting the still camera, the digital camera and the video camera to every event.

And my girl is only four months old. Her events are really nonevents. A big, big day in her life is grabbing a rattle, bonking herself on her head with it six or seven times until she cries and I pick her up, and then throwing the rattle on the floor.

But in that five-second window of opportunity when she is holding the rattle and smiling, I can snap off at least 20 pictures. And when you are getting double prints, that is 40 copies of the same picture. My only regret is that I can't get a 21st shot off before she starts fussing.

We've kept Kits Cameras in business with our film developing, film purchases, reprints, and even reprints of reprints. It is our sworn duty as parents.

We have to snap as many pictures as humanly possible, and we are surely holding up our end of it.

At the colonial fair, I had a new outlook on those parents. I knew exactly what they were thinking and why it was so important to get those pictures.

"You need pictures of your li'l George Washington and can't get to the front," I felt like asking a woman who was short in stature but large in pride. "I'll knock over every single person in front of you so you can get there and get that priceless picture. I mean, before you know it, your little George Washington will be an old Abe Lincoln, and you'll want that photo."

I resisted knocking over people for her, however, in the name of acting professionally.

I felt bad when one woman ran out of film, right before the musical portion of the fair started.

She asked me if I had any extra rolls of 35-millimeter film she could borrow in this time of crisis.

Knowing she wouldn't be able to get her photo, I was crushed when I had to tell her, that thanks to modern technology, I was using a digital camera, without film.

What I didn't mention, though, was the fact I had four pictures of my beautiful little girl on that digital camera.

At least technology is good for something.

Casey Ressler (ressler@alaska.net) is the Frontiersman Valley Life editor. He is ashamed to admit he doesn't have a picture of Madison Clare Ressler in his wallet — only because 8-by-10s don't fold well.