I don't have too many serious shell stories that none of you know about, but
I do have a rather strange nightmare come true that happened about 2 weeks
ago.
    I decided to take my 20th birthday off from school and went down to the
C&O canal to shoot a few more rolls of film for my photography class. Now I
had missed a month of school due to illness earlier in the year and I knew I
was playing with fire by skipping class. Since I don't have my own light
meter and the camera I own is a programed one, I had to borrow the school's
equipment. I had signed a form the first day of class that if by some strange
event, the equipment was damaged, I have to give my liver in payment. One can
have rather strange nightmares about this I might add.
    Anyway, I figured I could rationalize taking the day off by shooting 4
rolls of film while looking for Viviparids and whatever else was washed up
during the last high water period. Since we have been a drought situation the
past year or so, the river never really has had a good high water stage and
so all that was there were a few really bad looking Corbicula. The water was
clearer than usual and I could really see some nice unionids and various
snails in the river, but not a single vivpiarid was found. The day wasn't a
total loss because I had several rolls of really good shots and what was left
of my sanity. Anyway, I was resting on a rock that jettied out in the water
and I had set the light meter and camera (on tripod) down to put gloves on.
Well, you intelligent people can figure out what happened next. Yes, you
guessed it. BOTH the lightmeter and the camera/tripod fell into about 3 feet
of water. I got the wonderful chance for a polar-bear swim in the Potomac in
December. Well, after I finished saying OHMIGOD OHMIGOD and a few other
choice words, I fished everything out. Did you guys know that lightmeters
actually float for about 3 min? Too bad the tripod sunk like a rock (It
wasn't a new aluminum one)
I got everything home in one piece (although a wet one piece) and inspected
the damage. Figuring I had bought about $500 in camera equipment, I sat up
all night trying to figure out how one removes ones liver for payment. Well,
I went in the next morning and told the lab tech what happened and after she
laughed for about 10 min, only stopping to take a breath, she handed me a
screw driver and told me to open it up and dry it out. Well, the good child
that I am, I had already done that. We got everything dried out and working
except for the lightmeter. It still reads a pure white background as a pure
black. Wanna know the worst thing? The TMax 100 film I was using doesn't like
to be pre-wetted in the developing process so when I had finally fished
everything out and got everything dried and developed, the negatives had all
these horrible water streaks and creases on the roll that was in the camera.
All this and still NO Viviparids.

Sarah

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Sarah R. Watson
Silver Spring, MD.
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