As Appeared in the Washington Post:

Developing Pictures
By: Debbie Farmer 

I don't want to brag, but I've always thought of myself as, well, a fairly 
educated person. I know how to set a thermostat, program a VCR and work a 
computer by myself. I can, for the most part, balance a checkbook, pump my 
own gas and make a mean egg plant casserole. 

But, no matter how hard I try, I can't figure out the local drug store's 
system for processing film. 

OK, OK. Some of you more savvy types are probably thinking, "What's the big 
deal, Lady? You go to the counter, fill out the envelope, slip it into the 
slot and Viola! A spider monkey could do it." 

Others of you (and you know who you are) know EXACTLY what I mean. You're 
the kind of person who charges into the photo section with gobs of finished 
rolls of film, pulls out an envelope and then immediately faints dead away 
on the floor. Suddenly you, a person who graduated Suma Cum Laude, can't 
figure out which box to mark. Or what kind of film you have. Or why you're 
wearing blue sandals with red skirt. Or where you stand on the whole 
Harrison Ford dating Calista Flockhart issue. In fact, you're no longer sure 
of anything anymore. 

And don't bother asking me why this happens because, well, I don't know. 
But I have a feeling it has something to do with all of the choices. I admit, 
whenever I'm given anything more than three choices my whole system shuts down. 

Like the other day when I went to drop off my film at the local drugstore. 
I was immediately surround by approximately thirty-two tiny yellow signs, 
all with various, reasonable sounding, options. Do I want one day service or 
two? Double prints or CD disk? Advantage or Advanced film process? How about 
twelve single 5x7's? Or Twenty-four 3x5 triple prints? Color or black and 
white? And on and on. 

There was a weary-looking lady next to me surrounded by a pile of envelopes, 
each with almost everything crossed out. I immediately relaxed because I knew 
I was in the company of another hopelessly confused person. 

"I can't believe this is so hard," she turned to me. "Just when I finally got 
the hang of buying panty hose." 

I was in complete sympathy. 

In fact, I thought back to the good old days when getting film developed meant 
putting your 110 cartridge into an envelope with your name scrawled on it. But 
clearly, this was no longer something so be taken so lightly. Now-a-days if 
you make one wrong mark you could end up with something very, very bad. Like 
the time my friend Julie thought she marked single 5x7 prints and she same 
home with fifty-seven dollars worth of color slides. And she doesn't even own 
a slide projector. 

I admit it's times like this that I envy my friend Shirley, who's gone digital. 
The only problem is that she has everything from the birth of her son to his 
seventh birthday party stuck inside of her camera. At last count, she has 
approximately 7000 pictures in there. But, hey, at least she knows where she 
stands. 

But getting back to my point. After much discussion of size and processing and 
all that we decided three important things: 1) you should not, under any 
circumstance, just mark everything on the envelope and see what happens, 
2) Harrison Ford dating Calista Flockhart is just plain wrong, and 3) the best 
thing to do is to choose the section with the 3x5 double prints in color. 

We marked our envelopes and slid them through the slot. Then we stood around 
for a moment and swapped picture-developing horror stories before going our 
separate ways. 

And I'd like to tell you that everything turned out OK, but it didn't. Oh sure, 
I got what I ordered, but when I picked up my film I had 24 double prints of 
several tiny blurry images that could've either been my family or squirrels and 
one particularly colorful picture of my thumb. 

And, folks, I didn't even scream. 

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