Driving Miss Julesy

Back when I had permed hair and used to drive him around. Oh, how times have changed.

This little guy just got his driver's license. You read that right. No, he's not the tiniest motorist in the country... the photo is dated August 5, 1993. He's 16 now, and I'm older than that. My sister took this photo in their driveway during one of the rare weekends I took time out of my party schedule college studies and went home for a visit. The actual image you see is a direct scan from the first print I made in my color photography class, which I was only able to take after 4 semesters of various black & white pre-requisite photography courses.

This was long ago, in the early 90's; a time when hair perms, not digital cameras, were all the rage. Back when we used a thing called film and chemicals to process what became the negatives; which led to shining a big, expensive light through the negatives onto a substance called photo paper for a specifically-determined amount of time, after which we used rubber-tipped wooden tongs to dip and remove the photo paper in several other chemicals with great timing and precision, all while holding our breath until our efforts turned into what was known as an acceptable developed print. Did I mention this all had to happen by hand and in total darkness, with the exception of the safelight's amber glow? Man, those were the days.

I knew I had to find this photo of my newly old-enough-to-drive nephew for this particular post not only because he was adorable (still is, but it's hard to call someone who towers over you "adorable"), but because of what my color photography teacher wrote on the back. He wasn't only my CP teacher, but was also the department chair, my advisor, my boss (I was in charge of keeping the campus photo lab afloat, he was in charge of signing my measly paycheck for doing so), and also the man most likely to bust everyone's chops on the smallest of things because he rolled OLD SCHOOL like that. No critical stone was left unturned. He was not one of those art department teachers that wore torn jeans and acted more like a friend. He was a ball-buster, so we got along pretty well.

The first color project he assigned was to print one candid photo of a family member we either took ourselves or were actually in. They need not be artistic because he was going to be grading on our ability to achieve perfect color balance. The above photo was the very first color shot from the first color roll that I completed by hand from negative to print; an insanely time-consuming and complicated process that begins with mixing the horribly odorous chemistry, which was made worse by the fact that my lab time was on a Thursday morning, and, hello? Wednesdays were quarter-tapper nights at our favorite bar (there was a lot of dry-heaving in the darkroom on those early mornings). During the critique he said that only a few of us had gotten that color balance perfection on the first project, and I was actually one of them. I thought we would get A's.

I should have known better because I had taken classes taught by this same professor in each of the previous 4 semesters and it was never that easy with him. If you had perfect color balance, he'd find something else to deduct points from. That "something else" was never what you'd have expected to be graded on, and as soon as you realized what he'd downgraded you for, you made sure never to make that mistake again. The problem was that he was always 2 steps in front of us, and when we adjusted for one thing, he was already marking us off on something else we hadn't thought of.

On this first project, I failed to secure the paper tray in the bottom left corner when I exposed the negative to light, which made that corner of the photo imperfect. I circled it in red because the 2 people I showed the photo to yesterday had no idea what I was talking about; which was kind of my point. What made my grade imperfect was my failure to NOTICE that corner, which prevented me from re-doing the print before turning it in. His evaluation is still written in pen on the back of the print: "Color good, but white photo borders aren't clean in lower left corner; watch the processing. Grade: B+". Of course his hardcore criticisms always made us better, and ultimately he was a better teacher for it.

Although my nephew scraped his mother's car with a mailbox the night before his driving test (In essence, it was his very own first downgrade, and I bet he won't do THAT again!), he passed and is now a card-carrying member of the people who better not be in the left lane unless they're passing club. I look forward to letting HIM cart ME around after all these years. I am tempted to sit in the back seat and let him be the Morgan Freeman to my Jessica Tandy, but even if I mentioned that particular pop culture reference to him, he'd have no idea what I'm talking about. Since I'd like to remain the cool aunt, I think I'm just going to enjoy the view from the passenger seat. Hopefully I won't be doing any of that floorboard foot pounding on a phantom brake pedal that the adults always did when I first got my license.