Liff

Liff is a veritable cornucopia of inane blog fodder.  You heard me right. I said liff.  Now I will afflict you with the story of this new word.

The other day I became frustrated with the water-bottle lids floating around my upper cupboard, and decided to make a container for them.  I grabbed one of my empty, cleaned yogurt containers and a Sharpie, and began writing "LIDS" on the side.

Unfortunately, right in the middle of writing the word, I had a daydream.  (This happens to me way too often.)  Sadly, I don't remember what this daydream was about, because if I did I could afflict  you with the content.

Suddenly, I snapped out of my reverie and saw that I was writing the word "LIFE" instead of "LIDS."  I had written almost the whole word, except the two bottom arms of the E.

That's stupid, I thought.  Who in the world needs an empty yogurt container with the word LIFE on it?  I would rather have a nonsense word on my yogurt container!

So I finished the middle arm of the E, and ended up with "LIFF."

I made another container for the lids, and put this one back with the others.

At this point, my mother might comment (and years ago, she did say this to me, ha-ha), "Why do you want people to know that about you??"

I'm doing a service to humanity, that's why.  Now, when all of you do something completely boneheaded and begin wondering if you're losing your mind, you can remember me and feel better.

Now my only problem is what to put in the container.

My oldest child saw me photographing it.  "What's liff?" he asked.

"Liff is what you make it."  I said.

Photo Albomb

There are some things you just can't explain.  Also, there are some people who will never explain things.  You'll understand why I'm saying this in a minute.

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Have you ever wondered how often you've appeared in the photo album of a complete stranger?  Say you sat in a tree at Disneyland thirty years ago, and nearby a family was having their picture taken.  It's possible that you ended up in the background of someone else's memory.

Maybe next year, some stranger in Clovis, New Mexico will look at their old family album and wonder at the people behind their portrait.  (Look at that girl in the tree, wearing the red velour...)

Usually, we focus on ourselves in the picture, but the background can be fascinating.  For example, my aunt just e-mailed a photograph of the three Taylor sisters standing beside the Spokane river years ago, dressed up as old ladies for a fortieth-birthday lunch.  They're posing in their hairnets and fur stoles and hats, and from behind my mom's dowdy skirt, a duck is peeking.

I think the random duck is almost funnier than the costumes.

So here's where the unexplainable mystery comes in.  Say you're my grandpa Taylor, and it's 1982 and your granddaughter is visiting town. You take her to Griffith Park, and while she rides the train with her mom, you snap a picture.

The train's speed and the state of camera technology in '82 combine to make a photo in which your granddaughter is a blond blur in the corner of the shot, and an entirely different family fills the frame.

Now say you're not my grandpa Taylor but one of his grandkids instead, and thirty years later you see, in his photo album, a picture of someone else's family riding the train at Griffith Park.  You know that if he were still with us and you asked why the photo's there, he might laugh or smile, but he wouldn't likely give a straight answer.