Deleted Memories

Okay... so I am not going to lie... technology is not my favorite thing in the world (gasp!)  Call me old-fashioned, but this Child of the 80s remembers enough life before today's much-coveted gadgets to know survival is not dependent on them.  In fact, while most innovations make life easier, I have to question if some are making our life less fun.  (Before you continue reading... please note I adore my email, my blogs, and my GoodReads account... along with hair dryers and washing machines, ha!)

Example: Snail Mail Letters... who writes letters anymore?  I used to love getting letters during the summer!  OH the thrill of opening the mailbox and seeing an envelope waiting for you with the latest news (ha!)  Handwriting is a dying art form (and spelling, thanks to text messaging, is on its way out the door, too.  Do you know I actually read an article claiming we no longer needed "there", "their", and "they're"... and these should be condensed to one... really?  They are three different words!)  Do not even get me started on digital yearbooks.  Anyway... I could rant about this for hours... from which I will spare you... but I do have to say technology made me very, very sad last night.

In anticipation of CB's arrival last year, The Hubs and I cleaned everything out of our extra room (well, I cleaned out my things since his are all still in England!)  The closet was overflowing with high school memorabilia, including my homecoming mums.  Trying not to end up on the TLC hit show Hoarders, I decided it was time for the mums to go away... they were tangled, wrinkled, discolored, and the sparkly letters were falling off several of the ribbons.  There was really no need to continue housing them.  Taking advice from Real Simple magazine, I opted to take photos of the mums and toss the actual item... at least I would always have the photos, right?

Well... when I went to take a photo last night the card on my camera was full.  I went to the start of the card and began deleting photos I knew had been downloaded on to one of our laptops... including photos of my mums.  Long story short (too late), it turns out the photos of my mums had not been downloaded onto either of our computers (foolishly, I assumed because they were taken more than a year ago they would have been) but I did not find this out until long after the photos were gone.  Forever.  I was so angry I cried.  Really.

I am not exactly sure where my anger lies... with my husband and me for not communicating about whether the photos had been saved, myself alone for not checking first, or for the ease of the technology allowing me to simply erase photos with the mere tap of a button... should it really be so easy?  Upon second look this morning, I still have the photos of my mums from my junior year and senior year... but the pictures of my freshman and sophmore year mums have been deleted, never to be retrieved.  Plus the mums were sent away with the garbage way back in December 2009.  So sad.

Do not get me wrong... I am not this emotional over a high school token from 1994.  It is not really the abscence of the Mum Pics which bothered me.  It was the simplicity at which I could delete them.  Developed photographs are never this easy to get rid of... even those terrible ones taken during middle school you wish your family would lose!  (Does it seem to anyone else those actually multiply?)  I was thinking this morning about how, thanks to digital photography, we actually alter what is remembered.  Did the pic turn out ok?  No?  Ok, well hit delete and take another one.  Interesting.  I wonder what types of things would be documented if they were not so easy to erase.

Was The Mum Situation a severe case of Operator Error?  Of course.  It irks me how I did not bother to check to see if the photos had already been saved.  Totally my fault... but it also irks me how we can just delete.  In memory of my mum photos, here are some of the ones which survived.