Me and Savannah went for a walk right before dinner a few weeks ago. We both took our cameras. It was a photography outing, like a safari, except without a jeep and mainly just taking place on our street instead of in Africa. So, not very much like a safari, I guess.
Savannah got a DSLR camera for her birthday. She didn't necessarily say she wanted one. I just knew via fatherly intuition, the kind of fatherly intuition dads have when they're trying to push their own hobbies on their kids so that father-child "special time" is actually mildly interesting, which I frankly think I've earned after sitting on the floor and getting a sore back and making whinnying sounds for like 15 years in efforts to "get close to my kids."
So, to encourage Savannah's photographic artistry, I got home from work and suggested a quick tromp outside to take some artsy pictures of stupid things, like cracks in the sidewalk and asphalt smudges and exposed wires and piles of dog poo. You know, things that Jackson Pollock would paint.
One cool thing on our walk was this palm frond. I took a lot of pictures of it. It reminded me of the way we used to comb our hair in the 1990s, like when you used to part it right down the middle, right after you colored it with Kool-Aid. I don't think Savannah understood my fascination with this 1990s palm frond, which is understandable. Not very many people understand my level of genius, maybe just tree sloths and garden hoes, and that's about it.
I also spent a solid 10 minutes photographing this garage door, which I think further alarmed Savannah, and possibly made the residents of this house, who were probably watching me via their closed-circuit video camera, consider calling out the police, or at least the elementary school archery team. The neat thing about the garage door -- besides the fact that it opens and closes all on its own, all you have to do is push a button -- is that it's ugly brown all day long, but for a few minutes just before dusk it turns this wonderful color that I call "color-that-I-like-but-cannot-describe," which is distantly related to the way I feel about ZZ Top, whose music I like though I can't tell you quite why, at least without using the words "beard" and "legs."
After our 15 minute photography walk, which, to be honest with you, involved me taking photos and Savannah standing around asking me a lot of questions about the French Revolution (which I absently answered using mainly ZZ Top lyrics, i.e. "Why did they execute all the elites?" "Well honey, they were bad and they were nationwide"), we went inside and had hot dogs. Sometimes you just have to make that father-daughter bonding time happen, you know?