Too soon?

'You had to be there',

was what we used to say back in the dumb days not quite dark ages, before smartphones and googling.

Now, it is all there, unfaded, in easily reassembled pixels, or virtual memory, clouds.

Both of us, born before Search and Share and compare versions of history, or alternative facts, we can crop and auto-adjust the lighting, or apply filters-for warmth.

It is the way he shows me, pointing down the rabbit hole, we were just bunnies.

He says I will come across these pictures myself in the morning so he should explain.

I prepare for the confession, he is pointing to a collage of She’s, some he has known since high school.

The photo of the old school developing film paper type, a bit blurry some seem hazy with sun,

I squint and see girls, maybe sixteen, all dressed and posed as Cinderella’s, he points and says that party was fun, costumes of trying to look twenty-one. I see these young ladies racing, smiling, at what lie ahead.

He asks if I recognize the birthday girl and I do. The others seem more of interest to he, smiling fondly. 

It was obvious. 

Teen girls wishing to become-and portraying to be-savvy little ladies, married to Mr. Right, looking marvelous and wealthy- now -really--only miserly unfair maidens merely mulling over memories and what could be's, looking strangely silly to me.  

Weren't smartphones supposed to parse us all through this?

Some of the photos were duplicates, I had seen them before. Recently.

I have no photos of myself at that same time, at the same age, the boys did not take pictures back then. And then I am thankful. What an opportunity to forget…a thing of the past.

He still stares at his hands and I see sun spots, in case you were wondering. 

These women all worried the men may forget-what was then, what they looked like in a Kodak moment, when they had unlimited possibilities and poorer photo qualities, sadly they say they see

Then as the Best time, now it is too late. I never went to Pity Parties. 

Lately, he has shown me many, he agrees. He must be hungry for the plumped up past. He enjoys a reheated repast. I am never hungry (for leftovers).

He says, see there’s Me and un-pinches the post to zoom in, close as he can. I see.

That is not where he has been looking. He does not confess, he laughs it off walking away.

Close enough.

Things never were the same. He is googling away. I am deleting photos. 

Painting by Édouard Manet, On the Beach (1873) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.