My mom has asked me to print some wedding photos for her when I go home next week. I asked her why she didn’t have my dad do it because it would be simple and probably cheap at Costco, and she said she originally had him do it there, but they messed up, and she doesn’t trust my dad with these tasks. I asked my dad what went wrong, and he insisted nothing was wrong with the photos; what was wrong was that there were pictures he printed where one or both Chris and me were not looking at the camera. I told him that’s the style of the picture that my photographer was trying to do, and those were not mistakes (sigh).

“Your mom is old-fashioned,” my dad grumbled. “She needs to have photos printed and in albums. Most people nowadays don’t even print photos anymore; they just view the images on their computers or tablets!”

“Daddy, that may be true, but wedding photos are different,” I insisted. “People still like to print special pictures like that, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s nice to display them in the house and in albums.”

“I guess,” he responded. “But that is just so much clutter. There’s too much clutter in the house already, and now you want to add more clutter? It’s just too much stuff!”

The conversation went on as insipidly as you can imagine, but the general gist was that I said that wedding photos, and photos in general, are not clutter; they are memories, and there’s nothing wrong with wanting to display memories of happy times.

I can’t believe he implied my wedding photos are clutter.

No, wait. Yes, I can.