Vacation

I’ve been going on vacation to the same place now ever since Kaitlyn and I got married, and every year we would go on a date together. Just the two of us. Most of the time we kept it simple on vacation dates. We would go for walks at the yacht club, dinner at a nice place, or wine tasting at a quaint vineyard. However, no matter what we did it was always special to me. There’s no better date than a vacation date! Last week, I was on vacation in the same place. This time without Kaitlyn.. It was different, not bad, but different for sure. I missed our dates. I missed having a partner in doing the things that nobody but me (including her) wanted to do. Mostly though, I missed her company. It wasn’t quite as relaxing without her there. I know I’m gonna have lots of vacations without her in the future, and I know that I’ll enjoy all of them. This was just the first one, and it was different…
Flash back to vacation six years ago: Kaitlyn and I went into a photo booth to take some fun pictures together! When we sat down, we weren’t able to agree on a frame. The one that I wanted made it look like we were in space, (which is clearly always the right choice) and the one that she wanted said “SO CUTE” or something like that. What’s important to note though isn’t the frames that we wanted. What’s important is the frame that we ended up with. Between the two frames that we wanted was another frame that only exists for a very…specific relationship.
Kaitlyn and I were arguing, tapping the arrow keys on the screen back and forth from the frame that I wanted to the one that she wanted! I would tap it twice to the left and there would be that neat space frame. She would tap it twice to the right and up would pop her “SO CUTE” frame. We never paid too close attention to the frame that was between the two that we liked though, because we were too busy fighting for the destiny of these four photos! Unfortunately, there was a time limit to pick the one that you wanted and if you hadn’t tapped the select button by the time the timer hit zero, you were stuck with whatever frame was on the screen! One last time, I tapped left twice to move back to my frame and the timer hit zero just before my second tap. The screen flashed and popped up the frame that we had “chosen”. Or rather, the frame that was on screen when the timer hit zero, the frame that we had been skipping over for the last thirty seconds! In big, bold, all caps letters this thing said “JUST FRIENDS” at the top! I have no idea who’s picking this frame other than by mistake like us, but I know exactly who it’s for! I just imagine some poor fella having a crush on a cute girl. He takes her out and they decide to get in that very same photo booth. He’s a gentleman, so naturally he lets her pick the frame and she chooses this one to drive home the point that he doesn’t have a shot! Poor guy!
Obviously I’m not quite the gentleman that the poor guy in that scenario is, but I’ll tell you one thing. I’m thankful that we ended up with the frame that we did, because while I would usually eventually throw those away, we kept it and last year I noticed that at the bottom there is a web address where you can download a video of yourselves taking the pictures! I thought there was no way that they still had the footage it had been five years! I looked anyway, and when I pulled up the website, there it was available to download with 15 days left before they wiped it off their server. I would have paid any amount to have that video, but thankfully they only charged me two dollars! Enjoy!
(“Just Friends” Photo reel in comments)