Today, I became one of those people. How? No, not by getting a new phone. I hate my British phone so much that I could try to blow it up and, just to spite me, it would be perfectly fine (though it probably still wouldn't make any calls.)
I broke my camera.
Technically, the breakage happened last week, when I dropped it in a Portobello Road store (trying to take a picture by holding the camera with my already-full hands. Oh, how symbolic of my life.) I picked it up, it seemed fine, both of our lives went on. But as the week continued, it started to have some complications. Photos were constantly out of focus, but this happens when it's low on battery, so I didn't think anything of it and just changed the batteries. Sometimes it wouldn't want to change the picture taking method. I just thought that that must happen sometimes. But when the screen went staticy today and I noticed that some of the camera's body was a little out of joint, I started to get worried. I got back to school from my travels and took it to Currys PC World (the London equivalent of a Best Buy.) The guy who helped me pronounced my camera dead.
Anyone who has spent more than a few hours with me knows what this news did to me. I almost broke down in tears in the store. My camera is basically an extension of me, and every time any of my past cameras has had a problem, it's always been fixable. And now my beautiful, good quality camera that was more expensive than any of my other ones was broken. Not only was it broken, but it was broken two days before I left for a place I'll probably never go to again.
I was really upset. I'm still really upset, and while a good amount of that is because my camera is dead, even more of it comes from the guilt I feel over breaking it. Because it is my fault. I've been so good about keeping the camera in its case when I'm not using it, but I slipped up once and now I literally have to pay the price. My parents have given me permission to purchase a cheap camera over here, but I need to pay for it when I get home (yay... exchange rate...) as well as figure out how much it's going to cost to fix and/or replace my beautiful broken one.
Before anyone suggests it, I did consider just borrowing a friend's camera for my trips, but this was before I knew that my camera was broken beyond repair. Also, no friend would tolerate me using their camera for three weeks (I don't just take photos on trips. I take them as I walk through campus.) Bottom line, if I want to take pictures for the next two months, I need my own camera, even if it's not as high quality as my (now broken) one. A bigger consideration was that I have heard about a lot of stuff being stolen on travels, and in Italy especially. I've mostly heard of this in movies and books, and while I'm sure they were put in there for dramatic effect, I'm just as sure that they're also in there because it happens. Having my own camera stolen would be awful. Having a friend's camera stolen would cause me to feel guilt that I could not banish for the rest of my life (and possibly even more money to be given to them to replace it. It's a viscious circle.) So I will not be taking that route.
(Also, my guilt was felt even deeper because my mom sent me this Easter "basket" full of awesome:)
Script Frenzy update: 49/100 pages. Yeah, I'm slowing down. Arguments take up sooo many pages, but now my stupid characters have worked out their problems :p Anyway, I'm still ahead of the game, but not by much.
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