Back in the olden days, before they invented digital cameras, people used to take pictures on slide film. They'd spend a lot of money to get them developed, then assemble the slides at home on big carousels, load them into projectors and then bore the heck out of their neighbors.

Throughout the '50s and '60s, all across this country, you could hear the groan of unsuspecting dinner guests, innocent folk who thought they were getting a free meal but found out upon their arrival that they'd also have to sit through a three-hour Snore-O-Rama on last summer's trip to the Grand Canyon.

Thankfully, most Americans never actually got that far. Once the projector bulb burned out, the slides just sat in a closet like nuclear waste: harmless to humans if undisturbed. And thankfully, most Americans in the old days didn't even bother to get their film developed. In homes all across this great country, there are junk drawers filled with rolls of unmarked, undeveloped film. And they're going to stay there until you die.

Admit it: You're not going to spend money on getting them developed now because 1) you have no idea when they were taken, 2) 90 percent of the pictures are throwaways because you're a lousy photographer, and 3) you really don't want to be reminded of that haircut that seemed like a good idea in 1988, or worse yet, what you looked like before you broke down and got contacts to replace those Coke bottles.

I've never been a fan of family snapshots. Growing up, I lived in a virtually photo-free household. We weren't Amish or anything, but my parents, both of whom had barely made it though the Depression, were working with nine kids and an extremely limited budget. I once complained to my father that because they were too cheap to buy a camera and take family photos, I'd never know what I looked like when I was little. He glared at me, shrugged his shoulders, and ordered me to stare, hard, at my little brother.

"Basically, you looked like that."

Our family has been slow to warm to the age of digital photography, but we've been catching on. Digital cameras revolutionized the picture-taking world. Now, you can take endless shots of virtually anything that happens, safe in the knowledge that no one, yourself included, has to look at them. Where you used to take one photo of your daughter at a soccer game, now you can snap a shot every single time the ball comes her way. Or doesn't. You can take pictures of the family dog sitting on the couch. Forty-seven of them, if you want. On a recent two-hour car ride, my daughters took pictures of each other every four minutes.

Last week my wife realized that we had hundreds and hundreds of digital photos stored away on CDs, hard drives and thumb drives, sort of an electronic version of the family junk drawer. She went out and bought one of those digital photo frames and put it in our kitchen. It's the kind that allows you to load all your photos and run a modern version of the old-fashioned slide show.

Over the next couple days, she spent hours poring through folders on our computer, looking for frame-worthy shots, then organized them in a kaleidoscope history of our family. There would be a picture of us on Martha's Vineyard in 1988, then a shot of our son's college graduation. Next, a scanned picture of our wedding day. Some of the pictures I hadn't seen for years. I watched for a couple minutes, admitted that it was a good idea, then left.

An hour later, I walked back through the kitchen, and found my wife still transfixed, like a deer staring at an oncoming Chevy Suburban, by the glowing images on the little screen. A half-hour later, she was still there, but with our twin 13-year-old daughters by her side, three blank but slightly amused stares on their faces. I walked over, yanked the little plug from the back, and walked away.

"Hey," my daughter called out, " I was watching myself!"

I didn't even turn around.

"Just take a good look at your sister," I said. "You basically look like that!"