In Praise of "Nothing Special"

I remember the night we took this picture...it was sometime in late fall of 2004 and i picked up some KFC for supper...and just for the heck of it, i pulled out the camera and snapped some shots of everybody.

My stepson Mark, (he's the cute kid sitting next to my daughter whose sticking her tongue out) asked me "why are you taking pictures, nothing special is going on" to which i replied "exactly, that's why i'm taking pictures." I mean, there wasn't any particular reason to be taking pictures except maybe that disposable camera had been sitting on top of the tv for half a year and i was curious to see what i had taken pictures of so i was gonna finish up the film and take it in to Walgreens...

But when i flash forward to the year 2008 and look back at these pictures...they suddenly take on a new meaning to me...there's my incredibly handsome then 17 year old stepson sitting in the front room with his brother and stepsister enjoying original recipe chicken and mashed potatoes...nothing special...he's probably thinking about how he's going to convince his dad and me to let him go out with his friends for a couple of hours, we're gonna tell him we really don't think it's wise on a school night and he's always gone and why doesn't he just stay put tonight and hang with the family...then he's going to complain we're too strict and that he stayed home a couple of nights ago and maybe he'll stay home tomorrow and c'mon, it's just for a couple of hours he'll be home by ten.
He's in Al Asad, Iraq now, it's his second tour of duty....it's about 9 hours later then here which means he's probably just waking up now and getting ready to do God knows what...he told his dad, mom, and me that he's going to what they call Camp Cupcake which is suppose to reassure us that he's going to be safe, but we watch a lot of CNN and FOX especially when the headlines "new blood bath in Bahgdad" scroll across the screen...before he left last year he told us he was going to be guarding a water tank and it turned out to be a lie...he was the guy in back of the machine gun on top of a hummer guarding a convoy...this time he'll be inside the Humvee driving...

So this picture is just a snapshot of a "nothing special" night in late fall of 2004...a another boring night where nothing special was going on...and i'm glad i got a picture of it.