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.