Day # 6 (A Fun Fact About Me)

(NOTE:  This is Day # 6 of my 30-day "Blog Challenge"... 
see post of August 31 for details!)

I WON FORTUNE, FAME AND GLORY,

BOUGHT MY STORY!

[And the fans go wild....]     

Yes, it's true!  I've been published in Reader's Digest.  

Wanna hear the "story"? (I'm afraid it is really going to DATE me... but...*sigh* ... here goes, anyway!)

OK... so do you remember the days when pictures were taken on 35mm cameras and the film cartridge had to be removed and developed???!  (To my 20-something readers, I'm sure it's [gasp!] unthinkable, but I swear it's true!)  

And sometimes the pictures would come back blurry or out of focus, or with eyes shut, or with fingers in front of the lens... (and *grrrrrr* you still had to PAY for those... but I digress... !)   It was frustrating, and if you took a lot of pictures (like we did), it could also get VERY expensive. 

Mail-order developing was quite a bit cheaper than taking the film to the local drug store, and they did a remarkably good job.  You sent your check and your film cartridge(s) out in these little pre-paid mailing envelopes and about 7-10 days later, you received your prints (and negatives) back in the mail.

At the time there was a hugely popular photo developing mail order company called "Clark Color Photo Labs", and they put their trademark bright yellow mailing envelopes everywhere -- you could find one in every Sunday paper, and in every issue of TV Guide, PEOPLE magazine, etc.   Because they were efficient, fast, and (fairly) cheap, I used them almost exclusively for developing our photos.

And like I said, there were A LOT of photos, mostly of our (adorable!) kids: our young son and our baby daughter.   One day something happened that just AMAZED ME, and on a lark, I wrote it up and sent it in to Reader's Digest.   And whatd'ya' know?!   It was accepted and published in the December 1989  issue (pg. 112 under "Life In These United States")  -- and I won $400!   (And that was pretty big money back then, lemme tell you!)

So here is my story, as it was printed in the magazine:

As proud parents and camera buffs, my husband and I take a lot of pictures of our 2-year old daughter.  Since her birth, we have been steady customers of a large mail-order company for film processing.  Imagine our surprise and delight one day when a package of pictures was delivered and on the inside envelope someone had hand-written: "Boy, she's getting big!" 

Toooooo funny, huh?!

(And yep, that was apparently my 15 minutes of fame!)