"Here came the awful truth about slides: Too many mountains, too many trees, too many prairie dogs and never enough of your grandmother wearing cat-eye sunglasses, giving your grandfather that look she gave him when she thought he was being a precious fool. Too many hot-air balloons or Alaskan glaciers; not enough glum, pimply teenagers trying to look away from the camera. The lack of intimacy is what strikes you. The camera was always pointed at the most colorful thing, the most Kodachrome thing, the thing possessing what we all agree is natural beauty, but it was usually the wrong thing. Here is the turkey we ate in 1978, but why didn't anybody think to take a shot of whoever took out the trash that night?

You'd give back all those sunset slides for just one slide of your father at age 31."