Episode 14: How to Get Film Developed

God. Trying to get a roll of film developed these days is like looking for one of those things you used to put in the middle of 45 RPM records to make them play on a turntable. Or looking for an actual turntable, now that I think about it. Everything's digital digital digital. I'm fine with digital, though I notice that I never print prints taken with my digital camera; all of my memories live unrealized on little unlabeled silver discs in a box I bought at TJ Maxx that lives on a shelf in the closet.

I recently went on a camping trip, though, that involved whitewater rafting, so I had to use an old-timey waterproof camera that utilized something called "film." When the camping trip was all over, I had to go to five different drugstores to get it developed and even that took three days because every single machine in a fifty-mile radius was broken. Or so the extremely nice and extremely little person behind the counter at the last Rite-Aid told me. And when I say "little person," I mean it. She was a genuine midget - she even had a key ring that had a little rubber medallion that said "WATCH MIDGET PORN: IT MAKES YOU LOOK HUGE" dangling from it. Her name was Frieda and she also had a tattoo of a shrimp on her arm. I thought she was a very unusual hire for a Rite-Aid, but what the hell do I know? After all, she was the only person in five different "one-hour" film-developing drug stores that could help me. Lesson learned!