Last week my wife, Miranda Kopfschmertzen, and I had a wonderful visit with her family in Oklahoma. (Feel free to take a moment to envision Steve Martin running around as “Ruprecht”, banging his pans, chanting “OKLAHOMA! OKLAHOMA! OKLAHOMA!” If you hail from an older generation, feel free to take a moment to sing “Ooooooooooooooooooklahoma!”)
For my father-in-law’s birthday we celebrated by taking him to dinner. One of my wife’s little cousins, Brayden, was really interested in my digital camera. (Truth be told, I am not sure Brayden’s official relation to my wife, Miranda Kopfschmertzen, is “cousin.” My wife, Miranda Kopfschmerzten, has a huge family: dozens of aunts and uncles, cousins by the score and a family tree that might better be described as a grove or forest. Which is fine, because they take you in and love you like one of their own. Anyway, Brayden is my wife’s first cousin’s child. Whether that is a second cousin, a cousin once removed or something else, I couldn’t say. What I do know is that this makes Brayden’s official relation to me “little buddy.”) So I handed over my camera to Brayden and instructed him to get a picture of everyone at the table.
Remember how time and age seemed when you were five? Anyone who was older than you was OLD. Your grammar teacher was ancient, though truthfully, she was probably in her 30’s or 40’s. And your five-year-old mind was reeling with the thought: 40 YEARS OLD?! Good God, how do people live that long? Well this is surely how Brayden saw everyone at the table. But being the budding digiphotographer that he is, he cleverly employed the “Cybil Shepard” haze on the camera by rubbing his fingers on the lens, thus masking our ghastly ages and making us all appear timeless.
All hail Mona’s fried chicken!