This picture has become almost iconic in our household. I took it in the summer of 1998, as I tried to come up with the most inexpensive Father’s Day gift ever.

I bought a 12-picture roll of film, loaded it up in this thing we called a camera, kids, and got the kids cleaned up after day camp and hauled ’em into the backyard. I’m not a professional, but I think I did a pretty good job, nevertheless.

I shot the whole roll, took the roll to Walgreens for this thing we used to call ‘developing,’ kids, and this was the clear winner. In fact, even the developer guy at Walgreens thought so, too: he featured it in all their Father’s Day demo items in the store.

This picture holds many stories: the girls are doing what I asked and are looking at the camera. The boys are looking at the dogs in the run, where I secured them lest they run over the shoot. The kids are lined up the way they automatically did for years: Cole in front of Lane, Sam in front of Abby. I never told them where to sit.

What you don’t see are the other pictures in the roll, where Lane and Abby, clearly besotted with their littlest brother, started…fighting is too strong a word. Tussling? Haggling? Dueling?

I found this classic in the drawer:

I’m tellin’ ya, if I’d had a bigger roll of film we might have lost Cole that day.

What the heck is she doing now?

© E. Stocking Evans 2016