Selfies. With a Five-Year-Old.

My five-year-old son was playing Play-Doh when he turned around and said, "Mom, do you know what a selfie is?"

I replied, "Yea. Do you?"

He proceeded to tell me that his pre-K teacher asked the class who knew what a selfie was, to which my son raised his hand and informed her that it was a picture. For some project, they were taking selfies.

My son is a professional selfie taker, which can be evidenced whenever you look through my phone photo gallery. Honestly, he has my phone right now, which will surely lead to a new development of photos.

For five year olds, taking selfies is cute. It isn't unlike the many hours I spent making faces in the mirror to see how I could contort my face or learning that I could wink or raise my eyebrow, or even learning how to make a four-leaf clover with my tongue.

However, technology was different when I was a kid. We didn't have cell phones (gasp!) and camera's came in two categories: 

(1) The expensive 35mm camera's that had costly lenses and a detachable flash, also known as "Mom's Camera" that I dare not touch and break. My mom had a Nikon and I remember it being a treasure, used to capture the beautiful images of special occassions. I also remember taking trips with her to the repair shop when the flash stopped working or when the shutter would not open properly, and she paid to get the camera fixed because it was worth it.

(2) The cheap and crappy camera made out of plastic. It took 110 film that always reminded me of a pair of sunglasses. There was little skill needed to point and click, taking a photo that was often blurry, unfocused, overexposed (or underexposed), and rarely containing what you actually wanted a photo of. I had boxes of those photos: a foot, a blur of someone doing a cartwheel, a nearly invisible cameo of a friend, a headless family member, and so forth.

Furthermore, we couldn't take a photo and immediately see the result. We had to finish the roll of film (usually consisting of 30-some photos), then would take it to the store or photo processing shop, drop it off, wait a couple of days, then pick up the printed photos. And hopefully, you got a couple of great pictures in the set. 

My son and daughter will never understand the era of non-digitalized photography, when "selfie" was not a word in anyone's vocabulary, when camera's were not common place, and when every photo you took cost money. They will not comprehend the level of patience required to go through the process from taking photos to having them to see. They will not experience the pain that comes from accidentally exposing film and ruining a roll of pictures. Actually, they will possibly never know what a roll of film is.

(Blogger Note: Two additional posts about selfies can be found here and here.)