THE SANDS OF TIME...

I saw the above photo on ANTIQUES ROADSHOW yesterday and it prompted the following very short 'story'.  The photograph doesn't exactly match the description in the text below, but I just wanted to show you what gave me the idea.  The notion of people looking out from the past into the present (and vice versa) fascinates me.  I'll probably revise it if anything occurs to me.

******

The four men sat in their canvas chairs at the opening of their tent and smiled into the camera in front of them.  A switch was pressed on the little device at the end of the connecting cable and the moment was preserved for posterity.  "Wonder how long it'll be before we're back home," one of them said.  "Yeah, I can't wait.  This sand gets everywhere.  It's in places where I didn't even know I had places," said another.  They all laughed.

The sea of sand spread in every direction, disappearing into the distance on four far horizons.  It was as if the world consisted only of sand and they felt trapped by the monotony of the view.  "At least the war's nearly over," ventured one.  "A bit of mopping up and we'll be out of here, back to dear ol' Blighty."  The shell exploded almost before they'd had a chance to hear it descend, and all plans for the future, for their eagerly anticipated family reunions, perished with them.  Only the camera sur-vived, relatively unscathed.  The negative was developed later by their comrades.

Sixty years later, Albert and his wife looked at the faded sepia photograph of four men in army fatigues in its cheap frame in the window of an antique shop.  "The guy at the end on the right looks a bit like you," said the wife, gazing at Albert then back to the photo.  Albert squinted a little, taking a closer look.  "Yeah, he does a bit, doesn't he?" he said.  Then Albert and his wife walked on, and never thought of the photo again, having already completely forgotten it.

Yet in that moment, as Albert's eyes had looked into the eyes of the man looking out of the photo seemingly into his, across the decades and geographical distance, for the briefest of seconds he'd connected with the grandfather he'd never known, who'd perished along with his three comrades in a mortar blast in a far-flung desert in the closing days of World War II.  Albert hadn't even been born then, but through the medium of a photograph, fate had brought them 'face-to-face' for a few seconds, even though neither man, each in his own moment in time, had been aware of it.

Posted in: Cartoons