Marilyn and I stepped out of the car, with the new camera we had just bought. I was glad to get it home so I could try it out. I wanted to document our gardens with photos from Spring thru Fall this year. There are so many buttons and knobs and doodads on these new cameras. I was trying to get the batteries in when our neighbo, Mr. Know-It-All (not his real name), came running up to us.

“What have ya got there, a new camera?” he inquired, as he grabbed it from my hands. “You’ve got to put these batteries in right or it won’t work, this one goes up and this one goes down, see?” he said.

“Yes,” I said, “that’s what I was trying …. “ I got out half of a sentence.

He continued blabbing, “Then you push this arrow and then this button then it comes on. OK watch, this little red light should come on now.” He pushed and pushed, the little red light did nothing. He pushed more buttons and turned more dials, the little red light would not come on.

“Maybe you didn’t put the batteries in the correct … , “ I tried to suggest.

“I think that you just bought yourself a bad camera!” Mr. Know-It-All said. “This thing doesn’t work, you should take it right back.” Marilyn and I and that little red light just looked at him.

“May I see my camera now?” I politely ask him.

“Sure neighbor, I was only trying to help.” he said as he handed the camera back to me. “But I would definitely take that right back to the store and demand that they ….”

“Here’s the problem,” I said. “You put one of these batteries in backwards.” I knew that was probably the problem, so did Marilyn, (So did you, didn’t you?). The little red light knew it too, because when I turned one of the batteries around the camera made a faint whirring sound and the little red light lit up.

“There are a million settings on these things,” he said as he grabbed the camera back out of my hands. “Now this one here sets it for…” At that moment I saw a flash and heard a faint click. That was the first photo taken with our new camera, a picture of his belt buckle and half of his pants pocket. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to do that.”

He accidentally took two or three more pictures as he messed around with the camera. That little red light was going off and on every few seconds, as if it was crying out for help. “I still don’t think this thing is working properly,” he said as he handed the camera back to me.

As soon as he handed the camera over to me Marilyn and I headed straight into the house. We weren’t taking any more chances. “See you later neighbor,” I said as we went inside.

Now we were finally able to try out our new camera. I took pictures of Marilyn and she took pictures of me. We were checking out all the buttons and knobs and doodads that we could. After taking about twenty pictures we decided to load them into the computer, so we could get a good look at our photos. We plugged the camera into the computer. We heard whirring sounds, we heard ringing sounds, we saw little windows on the screen open up, telling us to do this and do that. Then the little red light started blinking. Long green bars started going across the computer screen. The little red light blinked faster, the green bars were racing each other across the screen. The little red light blinked faster and faster and then, all of a sudden, everything stopped. The computer screen went blank for about half a second, which seemed like an eternity at the time, and then the word SUCCESS appeared on the screen. Yes, everything worked as promised. The pictures were safely in a file on our computer. What a relief.

“Can we look at them now? Marilyn asked.

“Sure,” I replied, as I clicked the appropriate places on the screen. I clicked and the photos appeared. There they were, our new camera worked just fine. We looked at the photos.

Of course the first one was a picture of Mr. Know-It-Alls belt buckle and pants pocket, I’ve already told you about that. The next one was a photo of the right side of his nose. I don’t even know what the next one was, I won’t even guess. Finally we got to the ones that we took. They came out pretty well. Marilyn looked beautiful, as always. I looked like I always look, enough said. We were happy.

I picked up the camera and turned it off. As I turned it off I smiled and winked at Marilyn, she smiled and winked at me. The little red light didn’t smile, but it did wink one last wink, then went dark. Everything was cool.