Wind, wind, wind — click! Orange light aglow. It’s ready.

Pose. Smile, casual. You’re ready.

Shove the camera at whoever is near — she’ll have to peer through a minuscule viewfinder. She’ll look at you like you are crazy. You should ignore that.

“Ummmm. OK. Smile?”

You already are. Click! A flash brighter than your eyes can handle. It doesn’t matter, the picture has been taken, and you can’t tell if it caught you blinking anyway. You’ll have to wait for that.

Continue on with this practice for a night, a weekend, a few weeks. Until the winding never ends.

Head down to that Walgreens on 35th Street. Hand them your small, rectangular box. Give them an hour, maybe a day. Ask for a compact disk with the photos on it — you should never be that irrelevant.

Eventually, the pictures will be in hand, but the camera will not. Some prints will be great, but others will be blurred. Still others captured blinkers and frowners. Some may have captured nothing. Let it go — this is documentation of your friends at their most authentic.

That is what is so awesome about the disposable camera. It captures the authenticity of life. There is no room for do-overs — literally, as you only have 24 pictures that can be taken. And without a screen, it is impossible to know immediately the quality (or lack thereof) of the picture. Regardless, the moment captured is pure.

Documentation occurs instantaneously now. Uploads are play-by-play live-action shots shared immediately after they happen. It’s cool, funny and usually a little creepy to know exactly what my friends are doing the moment they do it. They, on the other hand, can’t see visual evidence of my activity until weeks after the fact. I am able to remain a mystery woman, not unlike the one I spotted at Caffrey’s on Monday.

The best part, of course, is once the pictures are developed. Reliving the memories is just as fun. And while you may miss out on typed comments, sharing photos in person can be even better than online.

Half a thumb over a photo makes it real. The dullness of colors makes it artsy. The shadows make it memorable. The unready faces make the memories.

I see the world imperfectly — so does the disposable camera. More often than not, I look gross. The disposable camera does not give me an opportunity to fix that. The pictures taken with it remember me and my friends and the places we go as they were most often seen and experienced. The lighting is not always perfect. Sometimes life gets blurry. Occasionally people blink. The cheap camera takes priceless pictures in that it makes natural moments last forever.

Some of my best friends take the most incredible pictures with great cameras. I am not as photographically gifted, nor do I have the ability to save money to purchase a nice camera.

The disposable camera does not care about my artistic or financial restraints. I don’t have to know aperture, f-stop or even zoom. I just need to use my opposable thumb, point my disposable camera and click. The result is equally incredible, though not as worthy of receiving awards or as quick to post
to Facebook.

The disposable camera is not perfect, but it’s an indispensable piece of my heart — and my scrapbooks. Don’t scoff the next time I ask you to take a picture of me and my friends with it. Just look through the tiny window, point and click.