RECURRING BLURRIES AND STICKER SHOCK by Greg Lammers
Kaylee stared at the screen. She held the camera up and took a photo of the wall. She looked back down at the screen. Oh no.
Kaylee’s assignment, along with all the other students in her 5th-grade enrichment class “Exploring Your Environment,” was to take 3 photos of 3 different things they liked at school, and then write a paragraph about each one explaining why they chose to photograph that thing.
Ms. Conrad had issued each of the eight students an inexpensive but reliable digital camera to use for the project. Kaylee’s was blue. There was a “Hello Kitty” sticker on the face right under the flash. Kaylee resisted the temptation to peel it off and leave sticky gunk on the camera, so she ignored the sticker as best she could.
She scrolled through the pictures she’d taken. There were 4 shots of the monkey bars. There were 3 shots of the cafeteria counter where Ms.Svoboda, who was so kind to Kaylee worked. The first 6 pictures Kaylee’d taken were of the gym where she played foursquare and basketball with her friends.
She sighed, not a usable picture in the bunch.
Instead of going to recess after lunch as she normally did, Kaylee went to Ms. Conrad’s room. Ms. Conrad was eating a sliced grapefruit which sat on a paper towel on her desk. She looked up and smiled at the girl,
“Hi Kaylee.” “Hi Ms. Conrad. Ms. Conrad, something is wrong with my camera.” “Oh?” Ms. Conrad asked. “Yes. See, there is a blur in every shot I take. It looks kind of like a person, or a monkey…or even a hot dog with arms.” Kaylee and Ms. Conrad both giggled. “Let’s see if we can make out what it is if we expand the image,” Ms. Conrad suggested.
Ms. Conrad fished in her desk drawer and pulled out a cable. Kaylee gave her the camera which she plugged into the PC.
Ms. Conrad clicked on the folder of the camera’s photos and started scrolling through each one. “See!” Kaylee exclaimed, “There it is.”
Ms. Conrad clicked on a photo and centering the blur, turned the mouse wheel to zoom in on it. The blur grew larger and the teacher and student saw that it was a person. With one or two more turns of the wheel, the face came into focus.
Kaylee gasped! Ms. Conrad chuckled, “Kaylee Nilsson, you’re playing a trick on me!” “No, that’s so…I don’t know what happened. Honest!” Kaylee stammered, staring at her own face smiling back at her from the photo.
“Here,” said Ms. Conrad, bemused, “I’ll get you a different camera, maybe this one will capture clearer images for you.” She pulled her hulking set of keys from her gigantic purse, and went to a locked cabinet, opening it with a little silver key among the seemingly hundreds on the ring. She pulled another little digital camera much like the first one Kaylee had used from a shoebox and handed it to the stunned girl. “There you go, try that one out.”
Kaylee took the camera, started to say something more in her defense, but decided against it, “Thank you Ms.Conrad.”
“You’re welcome Kaylee.”
Kaylee trudged down the hall. Her next class was Math with Mr. Diaz. Kaylee did well in every subject, but Math was not her favorite. She was confused and a little upset by the pictures and her interaction with Ms. Conrad. Kaylee had taken the pictures herself. She knew she wasn’t in them.
She had a tough time paying attention in math class. They were working with fractions. She was familiar enough with the use of fractions not to get lost, even though she didn’t listen to as much of what Mr. Diaz said as he might have liked.
After Math was Music class. Kaylee enjoyed music and the singing transported her mind away from the strange pictures in the other camera. By the time Music was over she was cutting up with some of her friends, enough to get a long look of reproach from Ms. Fleming. Kaylee straightened up after that but she still shot Emma a funny face and they giggled, just a little.
After school, Kaylee stayed for Exploration Club until her Dad picked her up. She got permission to take her camera and get her photos for the assignment. She took photos of all the places she had that morning. When she scrolled through them they were all clear and in focus, nothing blurry in or about them.
Her Dad picked her up at the usual time and they headed home. “How was your day?” He asked, as usual. “Okay,” she replied. She went on to talk a little about what they were singing in music class. She didn’t mention the camera or the weird photos, she didn’t think he would believe that she hadn’t engineered them herself. She was starting to wonder if somehow she really had put herself in them.
They got home. Kaylee went to the kitchen to get a glass of milk. As she sat down with her glass and a book about whales her Dad walked in. He was carrying his briefcase which he reached into. “Hey, Kaylee,” he said pulling out a couple of sheets of paper. “These wound up in the office today. Doug, you remember Doug? The big funny guy that runs our shipping dept? He remembered you and asked if you might want them.”
He dropped the papers on the table. In front of her were two sheets of brand new “Hello Kitty” stickers, including 4 of the one someone had put on Ms. Conrad’s camera.