Hazards of Scrapbooking

I can't begin to tell you how many times I've taken my life into my own hands in order to get the photograph that I want. Not that it ever turns out the way I intended. I am still a moosesnot photog at best, after all.

Anyway, I've climbed up on chairs, rickety chairs, ladders, bookshelves, retaining walls, fences, fence posts, and have hung my torso out over the edge of the wall to look down the Hoover Dam's sweeping slope and get a nifty picture.

If anyone in my party said, "Be careful," or expressed any other concern for my well-being, I pooh-poohed their worry. Gotta get that shot. It ain't a vacation 'til you have a scrapbook full of impressive photos, right?

Well. Wrong.

There's a Michigan family whose vacation is ruined and their lives are torn apart because their mom stepped over to the wrong side of a retaining wall in Yellowstone Park. Being on the wrong side of an important safety structure, she is no longer alive. And goodness only knows what became of her camera or the photo she was trying to snag.

It isn't anything I haven't done before. Well, OK, I'm scared enough of heights that I probably wouldn't have climbed over the wall. But I bet my last $3.89 that I would've sat on the wall and leaned back if that's what it took to get the shot.

Now I'm thinking about that woman's husband, her kids, and her entire circle of acquaintances, who are going to have to live on after her, without her.

The perfect shot isn't worth sacrificing your life. Just get the picture that will suffice. You can write about how you wished you could climb over the retaining wall in your journaling. That's what writing is for, anyway.