I am the archivist for my original nuclear family (FOB (father of blogger), MOB (mother of blogger, may she rest in peace), SOB (sister of blogger) and HOSOB (husband of SOB).  And of course, for my nuclear family, POB (partner of blogger) and SOPOBAB (son of POB and blogger).  I also have archived pictures of some of POB’s extended family.

After struggling to identify people in old photos, I decided that we need to catalogue pictures with names because the people who would know are forgetful or “no longer with us”.

So, I upgraded my iPhoto program so now I have face recognition software.  I will have to press FOB about some people; MOB would have known.  Thank Goodness, Aunt Betty was at FOB’s party and helped with some identifications.

Still, there isn’t room for the stories behind the pictures, but I will work on that next.

But there are some people in these photos who were important at one point but turned out to be rotters.  But if we don’t name them, then later generations might think they remained important but their names were lost to history.  THAT won’t do. So we have to name them, but in a way that conveys the backstory.

In the pictures of my sister’s wedding, there are many – dare I say TOO many — pictures of the one-time fiancé of one of SOB’s dearest college friends.  Subsequent to the wedding, problems arose and we took to calling him Stan (not his real name) so that if they patched things up, we could revert to his real name without negative attachments.  (Brilliant idea by HOSOB.)

Well, they didn’t patch things up and he is figuring TOO prominently in the wedding pictures.  (see back story http://40andoverblog.com/?p=1907)  Just to call him “Stan” would only convey his loser-ish behavior to very few people in the family, leaving subsequent generations to think his name was Stan and there is nothing more to the story.  No, this will not stand. He was horrible to a dear friend of SOB, whom we have all known for 30 years and, despite her Republican party identification, is FAMILY.  Every time he ruins a perfectly good wedding picture by his mere image in it, I become enraged.  Yet, I am a mom, so I have to be careful how I characterize him (i.e., no profanity). I tried out a name, but I wasn’t sure.

As I was doing the endless name recognition (10,000 faces can be daunting), SOPOBAB was looking over my shoulder and asked, “Who is ‘Stan the Loser’?”  And so I explained to the next generation the sins of Stan.  And now the back story won’t be lost.

And then I knew I got the name just right.