Mysterious strangers shows up in some of our old color slides

Somebody has been messing with our old color slides. Mysteriously, two strangers appear in some of them. One is a lovely brunette with a slim waistline and a winsome smile. The other is a young man with Elvis-like sideburns, long and dark.
I puzzled over the identity of these two people during a slide-show on a bedroom wall the other night. We have ignored these slides for 40 years. The pace of our lives allowed no time for viewing old slides. That changed recently when the CEO of our family decided to buy a slide projector and go through several boxes of slides.
For several days I walked by quietly “on the other side,” like the Priest and the Levite passing by the wounded man, as my wife watched one picture after another. I was thankful that she ignored me. The slide project was her pet project and I was glad. I should have guessed that judgment day was coming.
“Would you like to sit down and look at these slides with me?” she asked sweetly. By “sweetly” I mean that she invited me, graciously, to watch the slides. However, after 52 years of marriage, I know how to tell when there is a hidden meaning in her invitations. I knew she really meant, “If you have half a gnat’s brain, you will sit down right now and watch these slides.”
So I took a seat.
She had arranged many of the slides based on trips we had taken. First, she said, “These are pictures from your trip to Alaska.” Right off, she had me hooked. I saw pictures of majestic snow-capped mountains, Eskimos in Nome where I preached for 10 days, and the dog sled I rode on a moonlit night. There were a few shots of unforgettable scenery I had taken when a local pilot flew me over a nearby mountain range called the Saw Tooth Mountains.
Al and Shirley Krinke were my hosts in Nome. Al was a school administrator there. I had met the Krinkes when they lived in Minnesota. After teaching and serving as a principal for years, Al and Shirley had answered the call of the wild and moved to Alaska. They loved it and stayed on even after Al retired. Our hearts still ache from sharing Al’s loss of his dear Shirley who slipped away to the Father’s House last year.
Next we looked at the pictures taken when we traveled in India and Nepal during the sixties. Despite their age, the slides remain remarkably good, depicting memorable scenes of Hindu temples, untouchable children begging for coins, and people bathing in the Ganges River.
We saw dead bodies on the sidewalks in Calcutta. Everywhere there were poor people whose only possessions could be carried in a sack. Everywhere there was poverty unlike anything we had ever seen in the United States. Yet in every place we met beautiful people whose faith had made them strong and caring. Our journey there was so long ago that we sat wondering, “Were we really there?”
Then the big surprise. The boss showed me some slides of small boys. Handsome devils they were. There was one of our son Tim (now 48) taking his first step at the age of nine months. What startled me was the stranger who was holding his hands, helping him to walk. She was a slender brunette with a sweet smile. Suddenly she was no longer a stranger but the beautiful young woman I had fallen in love with so many years ago. I said nothing but silently asked myself, “How was I so lucky?”
Finally there was an even bigger surprise. Yep, there was another stranger – a young man with black hair and those long Elvis-like sideburns. I laughed out loud as I realized, “That is me!” Was I ever that slim, that young, and that bright-eyed? Wow! How the old boy has changed!
If you have some old, fading, color slides around the house, let me offer some sage advice. Get them out at your own risk. The shock may be quite a test for your aging heart. It surely was for mine. @