(click to enlarge)
Mom: It's... definitely a landscape of some sort.
Teshik: Brilliant deduction. Do you know from where?
Mom: Maybe...is that a lake or a wheat field?
Malady: Wheat field.
Teshik: Lake.
Malady: How many lakes do you know with little hills in the middle?
Teshik: That's no hill. That's... the curvature of the earth? I dunno. But it's a lake!
Mom: Why do you think she shot that picture?
Malady: It's because of that UFO in the sky.
Mom: The what?
Teshik: She means that blotch on the foto. Or... that one.
Mom: That's no blotch. That's the sun, hidden behind some clouds.
Teshik: No way. The sun has a major defining characteristic: It's bright.
Malady: She probably just wanted a photo of the nice summer meadow in the foreground.
Teshik: But why would you photograph a green summer meadow when you know you only have a black-and-white camera?
Malady: Beats the shit out of me.
---
I guess I need to explain that one. A few days ago, we decided to clean up our attic, which usually translates into "get rid of old useless crap so you can cram even more new useless crap into the same space instead of just throwing it away", because in essence, we're just a bunch of packrats. The fact that we live in a rather large house with much places to put and then forget stuff after a while doesn't really help either.
Said attic is (in addition to the crap we put into it), still full of my late Grandma's stuff we haven't managed to sort out yet, because a) we actually do have a life, and b) While Gramma did understand the concept of "throwing away stuff" in abstract theory, the practical application of said theory often left much to be desired. (Probably a long-term effect of having lived through WW II).
So every two, three months or so, we arm ourselves with garbage bags, steel ourselves all Metallica - Seek & Destroy, march to the attic, crawl into it, grab the first thing, ready to discard it without mercy, and then, inevitably, unstoppably, it happens.
-"Awwww, lookit, it's that thingamajig Gramma used to fibblewibble the whatsits. What a nice memory. Keep."
-"No! Not that! That was my favourite (insert clothing item or toy)
-"Nah, I want to wait a few years and then sell this magazine on eBay. People pay all sorts of money for stuff that's old enough." - "But it's missing the front page, and is full of chocolate stains!" - "Your point is?"
-"Oooh! Photos!"
Yeah, then the point is reached when one of us stumbles across one of those Li'l Photo-Boxes'o'Goodness. This particular box contains hundreds of photos ca. 7 by 5 cm(read: tiny), and spans from the thirties to the early fifties, and was probably untouched since we moved into this house, which was in 1984.Don't worry, I won't bore you with the specifics of Gramma's last trip to Mallorca. (Although: There is a picture of a dinosaur among them for inexplicable reasons). But I do want you to show the more, um, interesting ones. Take, for example, this:
Mom: Hm. What do you make of this?Teshik: Heh. "The Fat Wood Nymphs?"
Mom: Teshik! One of these could be Gramma!
Teshik: Not that we would be able to tell. Maybe Gramma just stalked some people.
Malady: Well, could be. It's definitely of the "Oh God, please, no photo" variety.
Mom: Gramma. Was. Not. A. Stalker.
Malady: Okay, okay. Relax, we're kidding.
Teshik: Besides, Grampa stalking half-naked women in the woods is much more believable, anyway.
Mom: Augh! (slaps Teshik on the back of his head)
---
Malady: Oh look. Little Red Riding Hood.Teshik: But...why are all these people in the reclining chairs there watching her?
Malady: They're not looking at her. They're looking at that chair.
Teshik: Maybe they already know that Little Red Riding Hood's going to get eaten, and want to watch the spectacle.
Malady: You mean like those people who watch car accidents and get in the way of the medics?
Teshik: Well, they are bound to have ancestors.
---
Teshik: ...and then, they were all beamed into outer space.Malady: What?
Teshik: Lookit.
Malady: Cool. Mom? Lookit.
Teshik: Aside from the obvious fact that we don't know who these two people are...how do you get special effects like this?
Mom: I have no idea.
Teshik: Mom? Tell us the truth. Are we quarter alien?
Mom: Oh brother.
---
Mom: Careful with that one. It's bound to rip apart any minute.Malady: Why don't we just throw it away, then?
Mom: Because that's one of only four pictures of your grandpa as a boy.
Malady: Really? Where?
Mom: The only one of the Hitler Youth on the left who's actually smiling.
Malady: Grampa was in the Hitler Youth?
Mom: Well, it's not like they had much choice back then. Do you think Grampa fought in the War out of free will?
Teshik: Besides, do you want to be in the cool group that gets you free uniforms, field trips, and plane rides, or do you want to be in the other group, where they spit in your face and throw rocks at you?
Malady: Err...I want to be in the group that lives in the twenty-first century.
Teshik: Wise Choice.
(pause)
Teshik: Well, one thing we can take for sure: Everyone hated the fat chick on the far right.
Mom: Huh? Why?
Teshik: Well, 1) She's the only one who stands apart, and 2) even her mother hates her. No loving mother lets her daughter out into the open in that dress. She looks like Obelix.
Mom: You don't know how this dress really looked. Maybe it has a really nice color.
Teshik: Ten bucks say that the dress was either bright orange, or putrid green.
Malady: I'm with him.
---
Teshik: This ship has severe problems.Mom: That's just the perspective.
Teshik: Well, if this ship's neither sinking, nor burning, nor getting pulled into the abyss at the end of the world, why was it photographed?
Mom: Dunno. Anything at the back of the photo?
Teshik: "Number 5". Is this a kind of code?
Malady: I got another ship here. This one has "Number 4" on its back.
Teshik: So, basically, Gramma and Grampa stood at some river, photographed at least five ships, and then numbered them?
Mom: Looks like it.
Teshik: I am so, so glad they invented Television.
