Remember When You Knew Where Your Photos Were Stored?

Where are my photos? The question had never before occurred to me. I just assumed that the thousands of photos I take with my phone remain on my phone forever. But the other day I was searching for a video I took last summer of a squirrel, perched on the edge of a dumpster, eating a french fry, just like a little person, and was told it needed to be downloaded from “the cloud.”

I called customer service. “Where is this cloud?” I demanded to know after choosing the right option from the main menu.

The receptionist took a deep inhale, exhaled slowly, and then said, in soft, measured tones: “You are not ready. It takes many years of training to be able to undertake a journey such as that. Or you could become a premium member.”

So I bought a trial-version of the premium membership and the customer service rep emailed me the instructions on finding my photos. The instructions were not quite what I had expected. Here is the summary: I would have to journey to the Cloud – a long journey through hill and dale, forest and meadow, brook and stream and river, over perilous seas and scorched desert sands, and climb the great mountain at the top of which stood the Cloud. And there I would the king, the King of the Cloud, or Cloud King as he preferred to be called, and ask him to show me where my photos were located.

I left at dawn and journeyed through a forest, and then the hillsides, and then the foothills of a mountains. There I camped, and built a fire, and made S’mores by the fire. Then I curled up under the stars, and dreamed that I was eating at a fancy restaurant with my digital photos.  The digital photos kept ordering food, and I had to keep going into the kitchen to make the food.  In the last scene, I was balancing many plates on a large serving tray, and being very worried that everyone could see me struggling under the weight.

I climbed the mountain the next morning, all the way to the top, and there at the very top, where the air was thin and wisps of cloud surrounded all, was an enormous castle, and inside was an enormous throne room, with an enormous throne upon which sat an enormous king, the King of the Giants.

“Greetings,” he said.  “I understand you are come to Giant Land to discover where your photos are being held.”

“Yes,” I said.  “Wait…how did you know that?”

“The Cloud knows all. If you wish to find your photos, I will show you…but only if you can defeat us in contest. First, you must run a race against Thialfi, my swiftest runner.”

I looked at this Thialfi.  He did not look very fast, and I had been doing 30 minutes on the elliptical a few days a week, so I felt pretty confident. The photos would be mine in no time.

The King clapped his hands, and the race began.  Thialfi ran very fast, and in a moment was far ahead of me.  After a few seconds of intense running, I felt a sharp cramp, and had to slow down, and was walking slowly while clutching my side that I shuffled across the finish line that was marked off by two winged dogs that legend said to hold in their mouths the virtues of Temperance and Truth.

The King watched me gasp and heave for a few minutes, and when I had regained my composure, said, “Well, let’s move on to the second contest.  You must engage in a drinking contest with Thor, the lightening god who is also good at drinking.”

I thought it rather unfair to set me against a god who is known for drinking, but I held my tongue, and hoped if the beer would be cold. I can drink beer only if its really, really cold.

We were brought each a large horn filled with beer.  I am not kidding.  A horn, like that would come from a giant…I don’t know what.  A giant ox?  Do they have those?

Again the king’s assistant clapped – he looked like he enjoyed this part of his job – and we began the drink.  Thor tipped it back and drained the entire horn in one draught.  For a good ten, maybe twelve seconds he was dumping beer down his throat.  I could see the gulps going down his neck as he tipped his head back.  Glug…glug…glug.  

I had put the beer down after a sip – it was very bitter and although I don’t mind a good IPA once in a while, it is usually too hoppy to take down in a large gulp. I was munching on pretzels and getting ready for another good sip when Thor turned his horn over towards the ground and showed all that he had drank the entire horn of beer.

“Well, that was two out of three,” I said, trying to be a good loser.

“One chance remains,” said the King. “For the third and final contest, you must pick up my cat.”

“Your cat?”  How hard could it be to pick up a cat?

They brought in the cat on a wheelbarrow roughly the size of a small car.  The cat, a grayish brown tabby with a white belly, was asleep, curled up in that ring shape, you know where they curl up on the side in a perfect circle, looking like a big furry button.  Very carefully they tipped over the wheelbarrow – it took several men to lift it even that high – and slip the sleeping ring onto the floor.  The cat did not awake.

“Now,” said the King of the Giants, “try to pick up my cat.  If you can do it, I will show you where your photos are kept.”

I took a few cautious steps towards the cat. I have learned from experience that you should not touch a sleeping cat.  And then I had an idea.  I stood a few feet away from the cat, and said, “Psswss, psswss, psswss,” I said.  “Come get your food!  It’s out of the can!”

The enormous cat woke up at an instant and ran over to a corridor on the other side of the throne room, past an arrow labeled “Kitchen” in medieval-looking block lettering.

The king shrugged his shoulders and said, “All right, I guess that counts.  Very well.  I will show you where your photos are being kept.”

One of the king’s servants stepped forward holding a pillow upon which was balanced a laptop.  With the servant supporting the bottom of the pillow, the king flipped up the laptop screen, and began typing on it.  After a few moments of typing, he motioned for me to come over to his side so I could see the screen.

“There,” he said.  “You see that folder down there marked ‘Photos’?”

“Um, yes.”

“That’s where your photos are.”

“Oh,” I said.  “Well, thank you.”

“But beware!” said the Cloud King.  “Many a traveler has become trapped by the photos.”

I nodded politely at the advice and then went home with my photos. I still haven’t looked at them. Five-thousand photos doesn’t really seem like much until you actually start to look at that many one by one. I did, however, find the video of the squirrel eating the french fry. I know that all my friends would love to see it.

Remember When You Could Eat Inside a Restaurant?

“Curbside pickup only” said the warning at the top of the online menu. It was our favorite restaurant, and I had many cherished memories of enjoying fine meals among fine decor, getting recommendations from the polite staff, and asking my kids to stop standing on the seats and staring at the other diners.  But all that would now have to be packaged up in those plastic containers with the clear tops, stacked up inside of a plastic bag with a yellow smiley face.

I won’t bore you with the travails of online ordering – navigating the different sections, managing the options available with each meal, adding items to the cart only to find the items either doubled or disappeared, trying to create an account and being told that I’d already created one, re-setting the password and having to start all over again while the kids asked if the food was here yet.  Soon I had placed the order and, after a frantic search for my mask, was on my way to the restaurant to pick up our curbside dinner.

I pulled into the parking lot, pulled into one of those spaces labeled “curbside pickup ONLY” and waited.  There were a few other cars there.  I looked over through the windows of one of them and saw the driver wearing a mask.  The driver looked back at me and I quickly put my mask on, too.   

For a few minutes I sat there quietly and reflected on the whimsical nature of life. Then I wondered when they would bring out my food.  Wait a minute, how were they to know I was here?  Didn’t the email confirmation instruct me to call when I arrived?

I felt around for my phone but it was not there.  In my hurried search for my mask I must have left the phone at home. And if dining inside the restaurant was prohibited, then surely they would not want me going into the building. So I found an old receipt on the floor of my car, and on the back of the receipt I wrote “Hi my name is Mark. I forgot my phone. I am here to pick up my order.”

The restaurant had a large window at the front, and through it I could see a few people busy putting containers of food in bags. I went up to the window, held up my sign, and knocked on the glass to get their attention. An employee came over and, through a mask, yelled at me to stop. I pointed to my sign.  The employee pointed towards the parking lot. I was about to write more on the sign when I remembered that the online order form had made me specify the make and hue of my vehicle.  

I got to my car and saw that another restaurant employee was already there, wearing a mask, and holding the plastic bag with the yellow smiley face. If eyes above a mask can look annoyed, this employee’s did. The bag of food was held out for me to take it, but there was no way I could take it from six feet away. So instead I used my remote key fob to open the trunk and pointed to it.

Suddenly, I remembered that a few months before I had finally cleaned out my old bedroom in my childhood home, and the trunk was still full of boxes. I had intended to go through the boxes at some point, but with the pandemic and everything I had just not found the time.

Waiting a polite second for the restaurant employee with my food to step back at least six feet, I stepped forward and started going through the boxes right then and there, grabbing stacks of chemistry notes, and review books, and quizzes marked up with lots of red ink, and shoving the stacks into the back seat of my car, and it was only after the restaurant worker dumped the bag in my trunk – rather abruptly, I thought – that I realized that I could have put the food in the back seat and gone through the boxes when the pandemic was over.  

When I got home I asked for the isopropyl alcohol, but my wife said I’d used it all, and gently took the bag from me and started taking out the food. I was washing my hands when I heard her gasp. 

Instead of our dinners were four ice cream sundaes in four plastic containers.  I checked my email and saw that I had indeed ordered four ice cream sundaes by accident.  In my haste I must have tapped “Get It Again!” on a previous order.  So it was ice cream sundaes for dinner. Well, at least the kids were happy.