I don’t want to brag, but I’ve always thought of myself as,
well, a fairly educated person. I know how to set a thermostat,
program a VCR and work a computer by myself.
I don’t want to brag, but I’ve always thought of myself as, well, a fairly educated person. I know how to set a thermostat, program a VCR and work a computer by myself. I can, for the most part, balance a checkbook, pump my own gas and make a mean egg plant casserole.
But, no matter how hard I try, I can’t figure out the local drug store’s system for processing film.
OK, OK. Some of you, more savvy types, are probably thinking, “What’s the big deal, Lady? You go to the counter, fill out the envelope, slip it into the slot and viola, you’re done! A spider monkey could do it.”
Others of you (and you know who you are) know EXACTLY what I mean. You’re the kind of person who charges into the photo section with gobs of finished rolls of film, pulls out an envelope and then immediately faints dead away on the floor. Suddenly you, a person with reasonable intellect, you believe, can’t figure out which box to mark. Or what kind of film you have. Or why you’re wearing blue sandals with a red skirt. Or why you read that article about Jennifer Lopez getting married again, when you really could care less. In fact, you’re no longer sure of anything anymore.
And don’t bother asking me why this happens because, well, I don’t know. But I have a feeling it has something to do with all of the choices. I admit, whenever I’m given anything more than three choices my whole system shuts down.
Like the other day when I went to drop off my film at the local drugstore, I was immediately surrounded by approximately 32 tiny yellow signs, all with various, reasonable sounding, options. Do I want one day service or two? Double prints or CD disk? Advantage or Advanced film process? How about 12 single 5×7’s? Or 24 3×5 triple prints? Color or black and white? And on and on.
There was a weary-looking lady next to me surrounded by a pile of envelopes, each with almost everything crossed out. I immediately relaxed because I knew I was in the company of another hopelessly confused person.
“I can’t believe this is so hard,” she sighed, turning to me. “Just when I finally got the hang of buying panty hose.”
I was in complete sympathy.
In fact, I thought back to the good old days when getting film developed meant putting your 110 cartridge into an envelope with your name scrawled on it. But clearly, this was no longer something so be taken so lightly. Nowadays, if you make one wrong mark you could end up with something very, very bad. Like the time my friend Julie thought she marked single 5×7 prints and she same home with fifty-seven dollars worth of color slides. And she doesn’t even own a slide projector.
I admit it is times like this that I envy my friend Shirley, who went digital some time ago. The only problem is that she has everything from the birth of her son to his seventh birthday party stuck inside either her camera or computer. At last count, she has approximately 7,000 pictures that have never been printed. But, hey, at least she knows where she stands.
But getting back to my point.
After much discussion of size and processing and all that, my new friend and I decided three important things: 1) you should not, under any circumstance, just mark everything on the envelope and see what happens, 2) I don’t care if J-Lo’s next husband is David Letterman or even Nicole Kidman, I’m not reading or watching anything about it, and 3) the best thing to do is to choose the section with the 3×5 double prints in color.
We marked our envelopes and slid them through the slot. Then we stood around for a moment and swapped picture-developing horror stories before going our separate ways.
And I’d like to tell you that everything turned out OK, but it didn’t. Oh sure, I got what I ordered, but when I picked up my film I had 24 double prints of several tiny blurry images that could’ve either been my family or squirrels and one particularly colorful picture of my thumb.
And, folks, I didn’t even scream.
