Dear Technology: You're Late

(Alt title: “Remember When We Went To Vegas And KK Lost The Secret Camera: The Story That Will Never Die”

Today I got this article emailed to me from my friend Leigh:

“Lose A Camera? This Website May Have Found It”

I guess there’s this website where if you find a camera you can post pictures from said camera, so that hopefully the camera owner will see them and somehow get the camera (or at least the pictures!) back.

Pretty ingenious (and yet semi-illegal, I would think).

Why did my friend send this to me?

OF COURSE there’s a story…

About ten years ago a group of twenty-something girls took a trip to Las Vegas. They asked around for a fun club they could go to and heard that “The Beach” was the place to be.

(remember, this was TEN YEARS ago, before cool places like PURE, RAIN and TAO Nightclubs even existed)

For some reason we didn’t take a cab (not sure why), instead we took the Las Vegas trolley system that runs the length of the strip. Who knows, maybe we wanted to save some money, or maybe we just wanted to live like locals. It was still another ½ to ¾ of a mile walk from the strip (hard to believe the thought of kidnapping didn’t even cross our minds).

The details of the night are a little fuzzy. The Beach was in this HUGE warehouse type building. And there were TONS of people. And there was toilet paper all over the floor (like ROLLS of it; streamers of TP would go whizzing past our heads). And every once in a while all of the bartenders would blow whistles and come out onto the dance floor with bottles of liquor from the bar and push people to their knees and pour the alcohol down their throats.
(sounds like some Spring Break specials I've seen on MTV)

This night, I was in charge of the “Secret Camera”. (This term was created in college, and referred to those cardboard throwaway cameras. My Dad used to get them free at work and would give them to us by the case. We took LOTS of pictures.)

Imagine four very drunk girls on vacation in Las Vegas – we took SO MANY pictures. Good ones, too! I remember having a sweater tied around my waist, and keeping the Secret Camera tucked beneath the arms.

At some point during the night I reached for the camera and it wasn’t there. I checked the bathrooms. I checked the bar. I checked the pool table area (note: I am mediocre at pool when I’m sober, bordering on ridiculous when heavily intoxicated).

We searched everywhere for this camera, which was difficult considering the floor was covered in three layers of toilet paper. Sometime around 6am we gave up and headed home in a cab as the sun rose above the strip.

It’s been a decade and they STILL have not let me forget it.

Technology, where WERE you 10 years ago???

(btw, I am no longer in charge of the camera. shocking, I know.)