Your Pictures Will Be Ready in Two Days

Paris 1989.

Remember taking your rolls of film to the store to be developed and anxiously waiting for when your pictures would be ready to be picked up?

The photo above is from a trip I took to Paris in 1989 with my husband and two friends.  The person on the left is my good friend Joe.  I have no idea of the identity of the man on the right.  I kept the photo for reasons unknown to me and when I came across it the other day it brought me back to that trip all those years ago and gave me a chuckle.

I remember that night well.  Joe was the stereotypical "ugly American" in Paris who, as you can probably see just looking at the photo, had too much to drink that night.  Joe was laughing hysterically as Tom and I helped him from the bar, and as we were trying to hail a cab Joe fell down and hit his head.  He was still laughing as he looked up at us with broken eyeglasses and blood running down his face.  When Tom bent over to pick up Joe he split his pants, sending Joe into another fit of laughter.

Now, if this trip took place during the age of camera phones I might have known who the stranger in the photo was because I would have looked at the photos on my phone the next morning and jogged some memory from the previous night.  I also probably would have deleted the photo.  So, I'm happier having the photo with the unidentified man because just the existence of the photo brings back great memories of an adventurous trip with friends.

On this same trip we drove from France to Spain, and my friend Joe was in charge of teaching me some basic Spanish to help me get around.  We abandoned the project shortly after I learned that when I thought I was asking, "Where is the bathroom?" I was actually saying, "I have a pain in my vagina."  Wow, that's the second post where I've used the word vagina.

Joe and I still laugh hysterically when we talk about that trip.  In fact, Joe and I laugh hysterically about most things when we are together.  We have no choice but to embrace new ways of doing things, but it's good to have old friends with whom we can share a laugh, and fun to remember the anticipation we felt with the words Your Pictures Will Be Ready in Two Days.