You Capture – “One Shot”

I’ve only been participating sporadically in Beth’s You Capture meme for various reasons, none of which are very interesting. So I’ll spare you and just move on to this week. The theme was “one shot.” The point of that being, show off the one picture you have taken that you think is best.

I didn’t shoot with this theme in mind. Instead, I looked back over the pictures I took last week and picked the one I wanted to share.

Not an easy task, I assure you. Especially with all the grandkid shots from our long holiday weekend!

But I did it. You know what’s weird, though? There’s nothing particularly artsy about this image. I didn’t crop it or anything. Although I did make it a tad bit darker.It’s not even one of the images I deemed good enough to share with the other images in the aforementioned post. But every time I look at that directory full of pics, I keep stopping at this one shot. So I decided THIS must be the one to share.

My youngest grandson, Joey, who is almost three was sitting outside our WV cabin in the woods with a small cooler, two buckets full of water, a wooden spoon, a ladle, and an empty plastic box. It was pretty hot that day, so I just planted myself in one of the rocking chairs on our shady porch and watched.

Who knew watching a toddler play with water could be so much fun? I am NOT being sarcastic either. I had a blast! That must be age creeping in on me.

After putting some small gravel and one large rock into the plastic box, he began very methodically transferring some of the clean water from the cooler into the box using the soup ladle. The whole time he was doing this, he and I were chatting. After a little while he declared that he was making soup. (As you can see in this image from that other post, he was having a pretty good time.) When I asked him what kind of soup he was making, he thought about it and shrugged before telling me, “just regular soup.”

“Not rock soup?” I asked.

“No. Regular soup,” he insisted.

This image says so much to me that you probably don’t notice. The boy is methodical, I tell you. He did this whole water transfer thing very precisely, using only his left hand to manipulate the ladle while his right elbow rested on his knee.

He’s got quite a sense of humor, too, as evidenced by the impish little half-grin you can see on his face here, which is another reason I like this shot. That’s one expression that can only be captured on the fly. (Remember, this is the boy who has been trained for practically his entire life to say “cheese” when a camera is pointing at him.)

His collar is up for a reason. Not because old G (that’s me!) is stuck in the 80s when wearing polo shirts with upturned collars was cool, but because Joey was riding his “motorcycle” before cooking class with his heavy weapon hanging around his neck using a whistle lanyard (the only appropriate rope I could find). I put it under his collar so the string didn’t bite into his neck. Every time he pulled the weapon off, the string lifted the collar. I got tired of folding it back down. Plus, I think he looks he looks sort of cute with that upturned collar.

Maybe I am stuck in the 80s… (gasp!)

Anyway, before going through the hassle of finding something he could use to carry said weapon, I tried to be practical and suggest he just leave the gun at the house while he rode. That conversation went something like this:

“Joe, how about leaving your gun here while you ride your motorcycle?”

“No. My need it.”

“But we’re going to ride your motorcycle. Why do you need it?”

“My want to kill bad guys.”

If you’re confused by the “my” thing, read this post. I am only supposed to share one shot, but if you haven’t already seen the holiday weekend grandkid shots, you’ll probably get a chuckle out of this image, which shows the “taste testers” that were frustrating him only slightly during this soup-making process.

Finally, a totally unrelated story I have to share. Well, sort of unrelated. Remember that “my” thing? It cracks me up.

Saturday evening, Joey and his siblings were sitting in lawn chairs around the fire pit while Mommy and I gathered a little more wood about fifty feet away. (The fire wasn’t burning at that point.) We heard Joey yell and turned to see that the collapsible lawn chair he was sitting in had fallen over on its side with Joey still in it. We chuckled, kept talking, and walked slowly toward him (he was obviously uninjured).

“Unnhhh!” Joey groaned loudly.

“We’re coming, Joe,” Amy said. “Hold on.”

“Unnhhh!” he groaned again, squirming in frustration.

“My stuck!”

If only I’d had my camera in hand for that one…