It probably means very little to him. It took less than three minutes (if you don’t count fumbling for change in his pocket and dropping all the quarters) and it’s just a simple four-frame, black and white shot of a gray haired kid and a bear I am lucky enough to call my boyfriend, giggling and making stupid faces and kissing in the last frame. But it holds memories for me, how later that day we went to the park and sat down and made fun of a badly-written book I had brought, and how we went to McDonald’s and ordered a few apple pies for the person behind us just because we could.

Falling in love with him was like jumping into a pool in July: It happened all of a sudden, and there was a brief time where the water shocks you before your body gets used to it, and after that everything just feels right, just like when we chased the fireflies around in August and got ice cream downtown (I put mine down his shirt). We can’t afford taking cruises around the world or a second honeymoon down in Italy—neither of us know Italian so it wouldn’t work out anyway—but curling up next to each other in a blanket fort watching cheesy movies on Netflix is just as nice(We learned not to watch horrors because I accidentally made his arm numb from clutching at it so hard).

Sometimes I’m envious of those rich couples who get to go to Hawaii “just because”, but then I remember that all I need to be happy is a photo booth so we can add another strip of paper to our growing collection of memories frozen in time.