From 1992 to 2002, basically the length of my first marriage, I took tons and tons of pictures. These weren't digital pictures. These were actual, physical pictures shot on actual film. Most of those were of my ex-wife and places we had gone together. When I left for Taiwan in 2004, I left all those pictures with my brother. Since I soon realized my brother would probably end up destroying those pictures, I took them back to Taiwan with me at the end of 2004.
So, when we moved back to America in 2008, I had no room to bring any of those pictures back with me. It wasn't a top priority at that time, anyway. It was another time, an ex-wife. Did I really want to spend a lot of time ruminating on my past life? Not really. But I did have a lot of pictures from places such as France, England, and New York City (pre 9/11) that I wanted to recover. I put everything into envelopes, and then into boxes, and hoped they'd be preserved in Taiwan until the day came when I could retrieve them.
Well, I did finally retrieve them when I returned this summer, but they weren't actually in the condition I was hoping for. It seemed Christy's mother got bored one day, opened all my pictures to look at them, and put them back into the box, uncovered. The box was placed into a rather dirty storage area, where all manner of animals and insects had a feast on them. With a pair of gloves, I went through what was salvageable, and discarded the rest. I probably saved about 15%. Some of my favorite photos (pictures of the Eiffel Tower, pictures of me crossing the famous "Abbey Road", pictures from the top of the World Trade Center.....all gone. Here's some of what remains. A few pictures from the summer of 2000, when life was more carefree, and I spent my summer in Paris and London. You'll see me in the some of pictures, as well as Amber (my ex-wife). I'll post the few pics I have from NYC later.
(The pictures were scanned, so they look pretty small. Just click on them to make it bigger.)
If only you knew someone who could have stored them in a safer place.
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