The Stranger in the Photo Is Me — A Self Reflection
Everyone’s clock must strike midnight.
We read an awful lot in my junior year AP Language class, and, like with most school-administered reading material, the words cease to exist in my mind the second I finish the capstone assignment.
However, there was one article we read in the Boston Globe by Donald M. Murray, an English Professor at the University of New Hampshire and a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist before his death in December of 2006, that stuck with me. It was titled “The Stranger in the Photo Is Me” and went into detail about the perspective of an old veteran looking back on his past self, mercifully ignorant of the toils of war. I would recommend Murray’s article to anybody.
As you have probably gathered from my high regard for Murray (and the almost-verbatim title), I was deeply inspired to try something of this nature myself as a practice of introspection. I was also, mundane as it may be, required to write my own rendition of Murray’s article for the class. I probably would have done it anyway.
In any case, I would strongly encourage anyone who finds themselves here to read the original and then try it for themselves. As you will hopefully find out, a substantial about of insight can be gained from doing this regardless of where your clock hands point, whether you are in the late afternoon like Murray or in the early morning as I am.
Life is synonymous with time just as time is synonymous with clocks: every living thing possesses its own clock, fixed at a rate exclusive to them.
In other words, one’s clock may tick slowly, gears caked with wads of bubblegum; those with these are sometimes called the lucky ones. Their clocks reach midnight far later than most. Others may have a clock that ticks fast — akin to a stopwatch — and completes its two cycles almost as soon as they begin.
Time is, as Einstein once said, relative; a clock belonging to a dog will, almost certainly, outpace its bipedal companion. A long and fruitful life of a dog, filled with chew toys and unconditional love, makes up only a fraction of the life of his human. Some fail to grasp this sick, twisted aspect of life — that at the end of each day, all clocks must strike midnight.
Unfortunately, nothing can turn back the clock.
There is a way, however, to temporarily turn the hour hand back: photos.
Like eyes to the soul, photos represent windows to the past, moments in time snatched, frozen, and framed for future enjoyment. Stacks of long-forgotten memories clutter up forgotten cupboards, patiently awaiting a time when they can relive themselves in the minds of a curious onlooker. Every once in a while I find myself perusing old photo albums and see pictures of family members whose clocks have long since expired: my grandmother, clock at half-past three in the afternoon, relaxing with her husband at the beach; my great uncle, clock set in the late evening, his warm smile emanating through the vinyl-covered photo paper; my younger self, clock early in the morning, flashing a toothy grin at the camera while embracing my furry friend, Bruce.
At this time, our clocks were roughly at the same hour. We were, I thought, inseparable — for all I knew, all clocks were the same confusing circle suspended on the wall of my second-grade classroom.
I stand in the photo, at an age of seven or eight, on the same teak floor existing in my living room today, sans the years of scratches and chemical abuse on its clear polyurethane coat. The same olive green paint covers the walls, and the gaudy flowered sofa has since retired to a different part of the house. Funnily enough, if I, along with the dogs, were not present in this photograph, there would be little indication that it was taken almost a decade ago.
I, however, spot the changes immediately. Cheap plastic glasses, likely my first ever pair and much too small for my abnormally adult-sized head, adorn my smooth, childish face. An oversized t-shirt drapes over my bony frame, forming an image of a melted scoop of sherbet in the late summer atop a pale, checkered cone. And a friend, one who I have not seen in over two years at the time of writing this, stands beside me, both of us blissfully unaware of the short time we would spend together.
The person behind the camera, my father, sees a perfect opportunity for a picture, likely knowing of its importance in the future. He, having had dogs himself growing up, is no stranger to the cruel discrepancy between our lifespans. I happily oblige, wrapping my arms around my Bruce, his fur an oxymoron: soft, yet coarse at the same time like an old double-sided kitchen sponge. I cup his snout in my hands, carefully propping up his boulder of a head toward the camera in order to strike the desired pose. His sister, Bailey, perches behind us, bouncing off the walls as always, unable to stay still. She has never been good for a picture; she would wiggle out of the frame and shower you in sloppy kisses before anyone could say “Cheese!”
Something can be said about how the concept of time changes as one grows; the days get longer and the years get shorter. As a child, the presence of the sun or a parent’s knock on the door dictates morning; a slice of white marble in the sky meant night, and everything in between a blur of play and show and tell. At the point in which this photo was taken, I could not decipher an analog clock — oblivious to the fact that my faithful companion’s ticked faster than mine.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
I grow. Time marches on. Tick. Three years pass. I enter middle school. Gray hairs sprout on Bruce’s face. Tock. Six years. I begin my freshman year. I notice my childhood companions slowing down.
During this time I had of course learned about — and experienced — the fragility of life and the inevitability of death: my “Student of the Month” betta fish had gone bottom-up a month after bringing him home, my grandmother succumbed to cancer brought on by a steady diet of cheap boxed wine and hand-rolled cigarettes, and two acquainted classmates passed away out of the blue during my sixth and eight-grade school years. In other words, I knew I would almost certainly outlive my two dogs; I was simply not ready for their departure.
Bruce received a diagnosis of blood cancer in the spring of 2019. My world came crashing down. He would only have a few weeks to live, the veterinarian told us.
Just like that, I would lose my best friend.
He fought like hell. A month passed. Two months. Three. Five.
It was now December, and here he was, still chugging along in his mellow, dopey fashion. Maybe the vet had it wrong.
They did not.
Bruce passed two days after Christmas. And, as I was when we first brought him home, I was present the day we said goodbye. His clock had struck midnight while mine still read morning. It did not seem right.
Alas, time marches on. It cannot be stopped. Bruce’s time had run out; mine had hardly begun. This harsh reality still lives with me today: I glance at his empty food bowl next to Bailey’s, I greet only one dog when I arrive home, and I see the wooden box on the mantle housing his last physical remains. However, his memory lives on through photos, like the digital ones populating the family hard drive, the snapshot of him I use as the wallpaper of my phone, and the photo best encapsulating and expressing our deep-rooted bond — the one pasted above.
As I sit here now with Bailey dozing in the corner of my living room, I am aware that she is probably nearing midnight as well, and I would be lying if I said my heart did not sink slightly as I write this. But if I have learned anything from these two, the speed at which someone’s clock ticks is not important — what one does during the time two clocks overlap matters more.
Midnight is a given, so cherish the time that is given.
