PHOTO-BOMBS AWAY!

Have you ever stumbled across something that's new, yet not quite so new. Such was the case with me this morning when I went onto my AOL web news page. On this site is a window with both the heavy and light news of the day, some very funny. This is where I discovered PHOTOBOMBS. Photobombs aren't a what - they're a who, namely people who somehow make it into your precious family photos and muck up what otherwise would have been the picture of the year by making some horrible face, or worse, by making an obscene gesture or exposing that certain part of the body. I'm not talking about the family members who make faces, jump in the middle of the shot or give their neighbor bunny ears just before the clicking of the shutter. They're a form of Photobomber, but not a true Photobomber. A true Photobomber is that slightly deranged person or people that you've never met, who somehow make it into the shot unknowingly or knowingly, usually the latter.
You could be at the beach taking a snapshot of your kids burying each other in the sand when that person who was jogging in the background by the seashore decides to stick out their tongue and flap their arms. One of my favorites, not shown for obvious reasons, is a shot of three girls mugging for the camera in front of the window of some small shop, only to have some photobomber press his bare rear end against the glass from the inside. Yet some Photobombers bomb your picture by accident. The little child who walks into the shot at the last moment, or the dog that decides to "dump a load" at the last second (believe it or not I've seen two pictures like that).
Usually we don't even know what's happened until we get home and see the pictures on the computer, or when we get them back from the drugstore. We're so busy making sure everyone is in the shot, or focusing in on one particular person, that we just don't notice these smug little bombers popping in and out. They're like elves. They come in when we don't expect them, and leave just as quickly, leaving their grimacing mug or disgusting body part tattooed on our photos.
Who are these people anyway? Why would somebody purposfully walk by, or lean in on what could be a perfectly good shot, or that magical moment that's captured on film only once in a lifetime, and soil it. Are they drunk? Are they mean spirited? Are they insane? Yes, yes, and yes!
Personally, I think it's pretty funny, and I'd like to think that I'm capable of doing that. But I just don't have enough guts to do that to someone I don't know. You've got to have a funny bone to be a photobomber; a broken funny bone.