My friends Kathy and Pete just celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary (yes, they got married as babies!). Kathy is a scrapbooking goddess — her albums are full of hand-pieced paper embellishments and practically burst at the seams because she takes and includes so many photos and collects endless mementos from every event. Too bad this gift didn't reveal itself to her until many years after she met Pete at the old Rendezvous — that long-gone, sticky-floored, dank, dark dive that nobody who went to the University of Maryland before 1996 could resist or ever forget — on the corner of Knox …

Ever since I took a photography class at the University of Maryland as a journalism major many moons ago, I've been "that girl" who always has a camera in her purse and happily snaps photos at birthday parties, reunions, holiday get-togethers and on vacations—even when nobody wants to pose for the pictures. Yes, I press them to smile and , and yes, my reluctant "models" are always glad later that I did. I love to share my photos with the people in them, and flipping through them myself when I'm in the mood for nostalgia can keep me smiling back at their frozen images for hours. Yet for years …