I’ve been going through a lot of old pictures lately which have brought back some wonderful memories. There are some pictures, though, I won’t find because I don’t think they were ever actually printed.
Janet took them the first night we met. She was the public relations officer for an education cooperative and had organized this banquet for all the school officials in a four-county area. I was there covering it for my newspaper. I had introduced myself and then ended up at a table being polite to a group of strangers for the next two hours.
What I didn’t notice was that Janet was walking around the room taking pictures of everyone for a news release. It wasn’t until we were married that she told me she had taken several pictures of me just for giggles that night. When she developed them later she realized I had a napkin to my mouth in every photo. She didn’t bother to print any of them.
She had caught on film one of my little tics. When I am in a situation of eating with a group of strangers and trying to be charming I self-consciously wipe my mouth after every bite. There’s nothing worse than talking to someone at dinner and looking at a smear of food on their lips. I didn’t want to be that person.
I’m sure a psychologist could have a field day analyzing that bit of behavior. Perhaps the doctor could have made a few conjectures about Janet taking covert photos of a person she had just met. That doesn’t matter anymore, I guess, because it was forty-five years ago. Maybe it just proves oddball people belong together. Even though cancer took Janet away, memories like this one keep us together.
I’d still like to see the napkin pictures, though.