Snapshots

I bought a Polaroid camera for two bucks. It came with 9 pictures in it already, but each one I took came out distorted and mangled and barely developed. Awesome.
Seeing as most film companies are ceasing production, such as Kodak and Polaroid, I figured film would be cheap. I stupidly forgot my economics. Film is so expensive now it's ridiculous. $20 for ten Polaroid shots and not worth it.
An average roll of film is $5 plus the cost to get it developed and onto a CD which is $4.50, almost ten dollars total.
I'm anxious, I guess. I like taking pictures with film, but one day, Target will remove their developing machines. Wal-Mart, CVS and others will soon follow. I'll have to buy film online and develop it in my dorm. Augh.
All artists are willing to suffer for their work, I guess.

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I started taking pictures of homeless people as a photojournalistic thing. This always makes me nervous, that they will attack me or get insulted, which is worse. I don't want them to judge me for judging them.
I got two shots of unsuspecting homeless people, but then I went into a ditch and saw two old men drinking 40's and talking about how kids have no respect. I took snaps of all the graffiti in the area and then raised my camera to them.
"Don't take my picture. Get that fucking camera out of here! No respect!"
I asked the guy why not.
"You'll steal my spirit, like a native."
I reluctantly put my camera down and left. I still wish I had just taken the shot and I felt angry at homeless people for the rest of the day.
"Why are you upset about this?" My father asked. "They were psychotic. Who cares?"
J.R. was right when he said the camera is this generation's handgun.

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I went with my father to Safeway to buy dishsoap. At the checkout, the cashier gave me a strange feeling of Deja Vu.
"Did I go to school with you?" He asked me.
"Ethan?" It clicked. He had tattoo sleeves and gages, but it was him.
"You in college?" I asked.
"PVCC."
The school we attended was a mile down the street. He probably never moved anywhere else.
Outside, my dad said, "Small world, huh."
"No, that just means nothing has changed."

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My father told me about some guy from Boston he got in his cab who came all the way down to Phoenix for the Red Socks game. Someone who has that much money to blow.
My father recognized him as a kid from school, since my father grew up in Massachusetts. He used to beat my dad up for his lunch money.
Too bad this guy didn't realize who my dad was. And so my dad took the long way around and cost this guy an extra $20.
"I got my lunch money back plus interest." He told me.
"How is that interest?"
"Well, shit, lunch money back then was only a quarter."
This guy told my father all his problems, ironically, and my dad still listened. Poor guy tried to solve all his problems with alcohol, his wife was in the process of leaving him, etc, etc.
"When he got out," my father says. "I told him, payback's a bitch."