07.12.2001 - 5:43 p.m.

Someone told me once that it's important to remember firsts. This person keeps not just photo albums but scrapbooks, elaborately decorated and arranged, with stickers and flowery notes next to each picture in gold ink. There are wedding pictures and reception pictures, pictures of her son's first smile first diaper first cry first breath. Or maybe just a double of the first cry; it's a little hard to tell.

Me, I'm not one for pictures. Last week I finally developed a roll from one of those disposable cameras (my real camera is MIA, perhaps under the bed or behind the dresser.) and I only got ten pictures, the film was so old. I guess they're good pictures, from a beach vacation with old friends, most of whom I've long ago lost contact with. And there are firsts in there-- my first best friend, my first sunpoisoning, the first boy I ever wanted to have sex with. (We didn't, but I could have.)

What interests me the most about these pictures isn't their landmark moments, the firsts and lasts, (there were lasts, too) but the ordinary ones. The way my two friends bent over their McDonald's, one stretched out on his stomach, in the act of inhaling a Big Mac, the other sitting on one heel, nibbling a fry while staring into the inner nature of the sand in front of him. The way another smiled cat-like, peeking out from underneath the towel draped over her while the object of my lust threw a frisbee in the background. Honestly the only picture I remember taking, and the one least interesting now, is a picture of the little house we had rented for the week, the first place I ever stayed without family.

So. This is not a first entry.

-stonebridge

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