The polaroid picture

[RODERICK]

When I was in the 6th grade in 1971 I went over to my best friend's house to find that he had just received a brand new black & white Polaroid camera as a gift. He showed it to me and explained how it worked. This was the very old style of Polaroid camera where once you took a picture you pulled the photo out of the camera and let it develop for several minutes before removing an outer paper that concealed the photo. The photo would then be wet and had to be allowed to dry before you could touch it, then once it was dry there was a special agent similar to a glue stick that you would rub over the photo to seal it. After my friend finished explaining it to me he set the camera down on top of his dresser facing his bed. The camera itself was gray, and it had a large red button on top to press to take a picture, and I think it had a flash cube on it, not a built-in flash. I kept fiddling with the camera as it sat there saying, "what happens if I push this button?" and he was getting really annoyed with me because he didn't want to waste a picture. I think it only held 5 or six shots and he didn't have any extra film for it. well, as you might expect, I eventually did press the shutter button and take a picture. My friend was very upset with me and he picked the camera up off the dresser and pulled out the piece of film and laid it on his desk. He proceeded to chew me out for the next ten minutes, but we were both anxious to see the finished photo, so he slowly removed the outer paper to reveal what I had photographed. Our jaws both dropped as we looked at it. There in the photo was a perfect, clear picture of his bedroom with him standing next to his bed telling me not to press the shutter button, but there on the bed was an adult-sized terrycloth bathrobe laid out just like it might be if a hotel maid had laid it there for a guest. We could see the overlapped material, the belt around the waist, tied in a knot, the pockets, even the texture of the terrycloth.....but there was no bathrobe on the bed, or even in the bedroom at all. We were both pretty scared at first, but after we thought about it a bit we surmised that perhaps it was his biological father who had recently passed away who was letting him know that he was watching over him, and my friend was comforted by that and kept the picture in a secret place so that his stepdad, a mean, abusive individual, wouldn't accidentally find it.