ONCE upon a time, everybody did not have a camera and a phone on their person all of the time…

Yesterday, I had this conversation with a businessman/restaurant owner who is getting married soon. We were talking about distracted driving and how everybody having a camera these days is not a good thing! He expressed that “no cameras and camera phones will be allowed at the ceremony, period.” Even his mother in-law asked could she use hers “if she turned off the flash?” Again, “absolutely not.” He wants all attendees to “be present in the moment”. Nice. I was recalling a very special moment in time from before we all had cameras on our devices and wishing I had a video or camera-phone photo of it, wistfully and acknowledging that the pictures are all “up here” (pointing to my brain), when he said, “No! So many of us take pictures these days on our devices and never look at them. You have and save the best memories of special times or even bad times, when you are present, in-the-moment and have to remember with your mind.” It is Pravda! So True!

On the other hand, at his wedding reception, all the usual picture-taking will be allowed, of course.
He just wants people attending the most important part, the Ceremony, to focus and remember it without distraction. It should be legislated that phones and cameras are banned from our vehicles and many other daily activities, in my opinion (IMO).

A classic example is below and from an email that I found while going through some more of my relocation boxes. Sent a decade ago, it seems more relevant than ever now (except that we don’t have to wait for pictures to “come back”). Watch out what you do at a party, because you never know who has a camera [now almost everyone] and who can blast your faux pas onto the worldwide web!

(Now she’s “in-the-MOMENT”!)

As Marvel comic books’ Stan Lee used to say, when I read them as a teen, “‘Nuff Said“. (however, feel free to leave a comment)