The Journey behind the Lens.

During those wandering days in high school I did have an outlet in a couple classes that made the the other classrooms easier to stomach, one was art class.  Each year this was the one class I looked forward to.   Art class is where I first experienced the darkroom techniques, processing black and white film and printing.  Ms. Peck,  a hairy under armed hippy twenty something encouraged my pursuit of drawing and anything that brought out my artistic side.  Here is where I get confused sometimes, or where my lack of perception thrives,  my mom and sister always said I could draw, I was good at it.  But I could not take those compliments seriously right?  Family praise always have a biased jagged edge that does not allow me to believe them.   However, when Ms Peck praised my art, I thought maybe there was some truth to the family praises.   Another class I looked forward to was typing class.  John Berger and I were the only ones taking this class.  I believe it was ninth grade and to avoid taking some mind jerking math or science we chose typing thinking wow this is going to be easy.  Little did we know this was a class that I would be using twenty one years later as I sit typing in my blog.  Mrs Griffith was a trip, I dated her daughter  for awhile.  She new me very well and always teased us,  she would always blurt out "Do you want me?",  whenever John or I had a question, hand raised in the air.  And yes,  she meant do you want in that sexual way, but being horny little virgins with fragile little minds we would act like we did not know what she was doing but we always carefully responded with "yes Mrs Griffith, which finger is supposed to hit the C, the middle or the index finger?"  Every time she did this I wanted to say,  "yes,  I want you and your daughter, we can have a little doctor session and then play house".   The most prophetic words from Mrs Griffith, "This is the one class that you take with you for the rest of your life, you may not believe me now, but you will see".   Well Mrs G you were right,  thanks a bundle,  I sure as hell don't need trigonometry,  and if Bobby and Jim were 2200 miles apart,  both driving to the same destination at a point directly in the middle of two, Jim is driving at 65 mph and Bobby will be driving a 80 mph but will make two pit stops, one for a six pack and one for a piss stop, both stops taking a total of 11 minutes, Jim left at 1pm and Bobby left at 1:35pm ,at what time will the two arrive and who will............, see thats the shit I do not get, never have, never will.   

  My parents bought me a pentax k1000 when I was in tenth grade.