DOCUMENTING OUR LIVES

DOCUMENTING OUR LIVES

By Charles E. Kraus

As a child growing up in the 1950s, the visual impressions that I had about how I looked, how I moved, how I appeared to others, came primarily from peering into a mirror.  Turn a bit to the left, to the right — so that’s how they see me.  A three panel mirror was state of the art insight.  I was protected from detailed analysis by the realization that restricted by my position relative to the mirror, there were limits to what got revealed.  Still, some things were obvious.  My head was small, long, more cube than sphere.  My hair!  I’d asked the barber to make me look like Presley, not Harpo. 

Our family camera was a boxy affair only retrieved from my father’s desk drawer for special occasions - celebrations, beach outings, visits from distant relatives.  The black and white results let you see images of yourself set in a variety of situations;.  Happy or sad, anxious or fearful, you were required to smile.  The photographs were an embarrassment, but also instructive.  I sure as hell was not going to be caught in that shirt again!

By the time I saw the 8mm silent film version of little old me, I was a college student, the sequence shot for a class project.  Who was the gawky kid with the Groucho walk, tipped forward bounding ahead on the balls of his feet?  In high school, we’d made fun of Brucie Babtox because he tried to prance like a hood.  Turned out, I walked the same way.  

Similar revelations occurred on the audio playing field.  In junior high, our voices were recorded by Mrs. Lascary.  I believe this had something to do with poetry.  I recognized every voice, but one.  My friends sounded exactly like my friends.  But my voice?  That’s not me, not how I talked.  I had … could it be true … a New York accent.

Cut to my granddaughter, Alice.  She is two.  Like many of her contemporaries, she is extremely well documented.  Just about everything Alice does — brush her teeth, mush up her strawberries, roll in the grass — gets recorded by Mom or Dad.   Every time Alice learns a new word, it is captured for posterity.  She lives in Menlo Park.  We live in Seattle.  Daily video installments arrive, as if a camera crew has been following our granddaughter around waiting for something interesting to happen.  Remarkably, it always does.

The viewership for these recordings includes, but is not limited to Alice’s adult fan club.  She’s a fan, too.  She splits her limited screen time between viewing Elmo and watching videos of her exploits.  Her parents restrict her media adventures because they want her to play with her toys, to do art projects, interact with friends, even old fashioned stuff like going on a family walk.  This approach to growing up has my vote.  

But, there is no such thing as merely taking a walk, or drawing a picture.  The walk is memorialized.  The picture photographed, copies sent to grandparents and other cheering sections.  The documentation gets reviewed by Alice.  When we were in town, we took a picture of her standing next to Cookie Monster decked out in his Christmas best.  During our short stay, Alice retrieved that shot dozens of times.  She was obviously trying to work out some thoughts or feelings about meeting up with one of her screen idols.

Will today's youngsters, so accustomed to seeing themselves as other see them, make corrections and adjustments to perfect their worldly impact?  Is the information they receive about who and how they are going to have a positive or negative impact on who or how they will be?  

I’m old fashioned, so I’ll answer the question by saying we’ll have to wait and see what develops.