Video Camera Generation

As I was looking through the calendar this week, I happened upon a list of celebrations and observances here, in the U.S., and some abroad. Little did I know that this week of the calendar year- the fourth week of May 2008 Anno Domino - is Pickle Week. I did not know that this is an international remembrance of the way pickled cucumbers have influenced the way we live our lives.

I also did not know of some of the other celebrations and observances such as:

1. January is clown month.

2. January is also fiber focus month, national oatmeal month and prune breakfast month. I guess they want us to be regular after the holidays.

3. In the midst of celebrating our return to intestinal normalcy, some celebrate cuckoo dancing week. (I don't know what that really is)

4. February is cat health month.

5. Embroiderers unite! February celebrates you.

6. Lastly (I could only waste so much time checking up on special dates) March 1 is pig day.

There is a joyous opportunity to celebrate virtually every day of the calendar year. Common holidays include Christmas, Easter, Valentine's, Thanksgiving (if in the United States). We are people who love to establish rituals to mark the passage of time. We have birthday parties, anniversary celebrations: included in the commemorations are baby's first toilet training, the loss of the first tooth, when I correctly learned to identify the difference between adjectives and adverbs - you know, all those normal things.

I remember graduating from high school and college. My graduation from seminary was a huge cause for celebration. Memory sometimes fails of my graduation from preschool although my parents have a wonderful picture of me grabbing my 'diploma' wearing a wonderful '70s style green jumpsuit.

Today I went to Josephine's kindergarten graduation. In these days, kids not only graduate from high school, they also graduate from kindergarten, fifth grade, sixth grade and eighth grade. Hallmark must be making a fortune. As Christine and I journeyed into the chapel where the graduation ceremony was to be held, we noticed that there was a complete forest inside the sanctuary. This was not a forest of wood, but a forest of tripods. Video cameras replete with all the buzzes and whistles of an affluent society. Most of the cameras were the size of the owner's palm; I remember when the video cameras were the size of a rocket launcher. My aunt and uncle used to have one. It was the kind where you had to look through the eye piece to actually see what you were recording, one eye shut, blinding light making all the people in the picture throw up there arms to ward off the luminescent assault. I'm glad video cameras have become smaller. I digress.

We took our position in the back of the church; all the front pews had been reserved by three or four people who were saving them for all the family members in the four county area. Thus, Christine, Greta and I watched our beloved Josephine craning left and right to peer around the heads of all the Johnsons and Jones' in the first fifteen rows.

As the beautiful singing started, I heard beeps, buzzes, whistles as recorders were turned on and tuned in to each family's star of the show. (There was some mild profanity uttered as a few parents had forgotten to charge their batteries.) Throughout the ceremony I noticed that almost all the parents who were holding video cameras were so intent on recording the moment that they missed the moment. Because future posterity was so important, they missed out on the life giving, breathing moment of the beautiful children singing in a choir. They missed the live performance to watch it on a little three inch screen.

I think it is incredibly important to record for future generations the 'way things used to be' but I wouldn't have traded for a minute watching little Josephine dance and sing and laugh with her classmates. I could visually see how she wanted to silence a little boy who was singing to far ahead. Even though our event was recorded also, I really don't know how many times we'll watch Josephine's kindergarten graduation in the future, but I do know that Life escapes all too quickly and I'm going to enjoy it live - not by Memorex.