Finding My Way

Finding my Way

My first day with my first real camera, I was so excited! I’d had one before where all you did was push the button. This one had zoom, different size choices, you could even take a panorama! I’d gotten it for my tenth birthday, after many months of hinting. More like begging. It was nineteen-fifty-eight.

I was told not to “wander too far” but I had seen everything in our neighborhood a million times, I needed something new. I felt pretty capable, after all I was ten now.

I’d wandered up to Dennison’s factory at Pineridge Circle, closed for years then, when a butterfly caught my eye. Bright blue, nothing I’d seen before, but it would not hold still for me. Without thinking I’d followed it, snapping pictures as I went. Finally losing it in the back, I left, snapping the rest of the film so I could drop it at the drugstore to be developed, before I went home.

A couple days later I got my film back, my first roll from my first real camera! And, there in the butterfly pictures, in Dennison’s deserted back lot, was Mr. Gregson, pulling the body of George Rafftery behind the dumpster.

My parents brought me, my camera and my pictures straight to the police station. Mr. Gregson ended up going to prison for a very long time. I got grounded for leaving the neighborhood without permission, but it wasn’t so bad. The police were so happy with me and made such a big deal, that my parents kind of had to be too.

So I actually didn’t grow up to be a photographer. I was a photographer already, who found myself, at ten, with the help of a very blue, very camera shy butterfly. And, I’ve been doing it ever since.