Month: November 2018

I was in charge of assembling photos for a church directory, photos I collected from various members, when I encountered a serious problem.

A man who went to my church told me he had dropped off a roll of film at a downtown photo shop that included several pictures I needed. Since The News & Observer, where I worked, was downtown, would I mind picking them up?

No, I wouldn’t mind, I told him.

The roll also contained some vacation pictures of his family, he said, and I could give them to him the next Sunday, at church.  

I picked up the pictures and on my way back to my office I began thumbing through them, looking for the church photos I needed.  I looked at his vacation photos too — his kids playing on the beach, mostly. But not entirely.  One of the pictures, taken in a bedroom, was a frontal view of his wife sitting in bed. She was naked from the waist up.

 Now what was I supposed to do.

If I left the nude photo in the packet, gave it to him, and said nothing, it would probably end my friendship with him and, of course, his wife.  They would have been too embarrassed to speak to me again — and I didn’t want that.

I could destroy the nudie and return everything else. That would be risky, I thought. Very risky.  If he remembered taking it, he might think I kept it. A fellow could get shot over a misunderstanding like that. Besides, what about the negative?

I could destroy the picture and the negative. Even more dangerous. He might conclude that not only did I keep the nude photo of his wife, I kept the negative too, so I could make more.

So, what to do?

I looked at the picture again — not her body — her face. She looked a little goofy, intoxicated maybe. Maybe she didn’t know her picture was being taken. Maybe he was intoxicated too and wouldn’t remember. Maybe he wasn’t even in the room, maybe the picture was taken by one of their children.

My conclusion, or maybe it was it just my hope:

He didn’t know about the photo, because he didn’t take it or he was drunk and didn’t remember it.   Even if he took the picture, and remembered taking it, he might conclude that the photo shop hadn’t printed it because, well, you know.  So I burned the photo and returned everything else, including the negative.

He said never said a word.

Coming Friday: A Navy Game

Part 1

As usual, I was playing basketball one Sunday afternoon with some full grown men and a bunch of teenagers. Some of the youngsters had just graduated from East Wake High School, where my sons went to school, and some were about to graduate.

Between games we got to talking about running and the little devil that’s always sitting on our shoulders whispered in my ear.

I listened.

And then I offered a $20 wager on a race: me against two of them. Since I was older than both of them put together they’d have to run farther, of course, to even out the odds and make things fair.

I proposed to run three quarters of a mile while they ran a mile, taking turns after each quarter of a mile, so they’d be rested, the devil in me said. One of them would run the first quarter of a mile, the other one would run the second quarter, and they switch again on the third and fourth quarters.

They accepted the challenge, and the wager.

I had run track in high school, a quarter mile on the mile relay team, the 880-yard dash — half a mile — and, sometimes,  the mile, and I was pretty good. I finished fourth in the state in the 880 when I was a junior in high school and fifth my senior year after a near season-ending injury.

I wasn’t in that kind of shape any more, of course, but I didn’t need to be. This wager was not about running, it was about math.

I thought I could come out — that is, run the first quarter — in 75 seconds, run the second quarter in 80 seconds, and the third in 85, for a total of 4 minutes. And if I couldn’t run three quarters of a mile in four minutes, that would be OK too. Because I was pretty sure I had a lot of margin for error. 

Is that fast, running three quarters of a mile in four minutes?  Oh, no. Ask any high school middle distance runner.

If I ran three quarters in four minutes the two teenagers would have to average 59.9 seconds per lap to win. I doubted either of them could break 70, especially on their second lap, and especially the big boy, who looked like he could play tackle on a football team.

I won, easily.

Part 2

Those boys obviously did not know my father.

My father had a bunch of rules that he tried to drill into my head.  One of the most valuable, certainly a rule that has saved me a lot of money, is this one: “Never bet another man’s game.”

They had not learned that rule.

I sensed there was more money to be made so the next time we played ball I said to the faster of the two boys, words to this effect:

“Your partner just wasn’t good enough. Way too slow. You need to fire him, get somebody else and we’ll do it again. Maybe you could get your money back. And this time we’ll do it differently. How about you and your partner running a half a mile each, in a relay, while I run three quarters of a mile. How does that sound?”

It sounded good to him.

So we went over to the track at N.C. State and raced again. The math hadn’t changed all that much.

I won again, easily.

Postscript:

Did I feel bad about taking advantage of those high school boys?

No. I felt like their teacher.

Coming Monday: The Nudie