Nikon

I was going to write about my neurotic animals.  Then I washed my camera, which was still in my jeans pocket after the Irish Festival.  No worries, it was cheap, albeit relatively new.  C'est la vie, or that's life (to you non-French speakers).

I ordered a new camera that should arrive today.  It does not fit in my pocket, so being destroyed by washing machine has now, fingers-crossed, been eliminated from the various ways I can harm it.  But as I wait for its arrival my previous camera mishaps keep playing a permanent rerun loop in my mind.  I've spent a little more money on this one (so that it can't fit in my pocket), and I fret that I will not be able to keep it safe. 

How hard is it to keep an inanimate object safe?  Well let's recall my history with cameras.  I will skip all the times I dropped my camera before I owned a digital.  There are too many incidents to keep them straight. 

When I was in college, my parents bought me my first digital camera.  It was wonderful, took great pictures, and needed little to no skill to use it.  I had this camera approximately two months before an unfortunate mishap forever took it from my novice hands.  My school took a trip to Cedar Point, a local amusement park, and I took my new camera.  We posed for a few pictures in line as we waited for the Racers, one of the most tame roller coasters there.  And then it was my turn to ride.  I was careful as I put the camera in my jacket pocket and lowered the bar, making sure to wedge the camera so there was no way it could fall out.  Except that it did fall out.  One camera gone forever (especially since I forgot to check the lost and found before we left). 

I don't think I ever told my parents about the fate of that camera.  Well mom and dad if you're reading this now you finally know why you never saw that camera again, I'm sorry.

Over the next few years, I think I stuck to film cameras, afraid of what might befall an expensive camera.  Then about five years ago I finally got a new digital one.  Radio Shack was having a sale and I had a coupon.  The camera went with me everywhere, out of the country to France, England and Canada.  To amusement parks where it stayed in the safety of a zipped pocket.  And even to my classroom.  Until sometime last year, when I put it in a bag I was bringing home from school, and I have never seen the bag or the camera since.  I know it was in my room at one point.  Now I think it is residing in the local dump. 

Well, now that my first "grown-up" camera is on its way I'm filled with excitement about all the macro, landscape and portrait shots I will take, but at the same time feel great trepidation at what may happen to this poor camera that is in my care.  Let's all send up a prayer that my camera will be with me for a long time to come.