Aww now Matt... Are you pulling my leg?? I never heard that one before...
I know I've mentioned this story before, but I once taught a pinhole camera/paper negative class to a bunch of 7-8th graders. We converted a school bathroom into a makeshift darkroom and developed there. After we were done one of the 8th grade girls came up and asked me how to get that fixer smell off of her hands.
I carefully explained that she was now the latest member in an honorable line of photographers stretching back 170+ years. That the smell was, in fact, a badge of honor that marked her as a member of a now nearly extinct sisterhood of practitioners of this ancient art that is understood by only a few masters.
Or something like that...
One of her teachers told me later that the poor thing didn't wash her hands for a week. That she walked around the playground getting all of the other kids to smell her hands. I heard years later that she eventually took a darkroom photography class when she reached high school. So you never know when one of those seeds you plant might actually sprout something.
Ken
