Contest Photo #15

Our Most Wanted

When I was a kid…

When I was a kid the FBI posted “Wanted” notices in the lobby of every post office. Maybe it still does. But as Mom or Dad waited in line for mail, my siblings and I would marvel over the mug shots and the tiny stories. For example, Wanted for Murder or Wanted for Aggravated Kidnapping.

For a kid obsessed with the detective worlds of Encyclopedia Brown and Ellery Queen, it was a game of phrenology. To try to match the shapes of heads, ears, noses, and whatnot and to find a pattern. To try to read predictions in expression. The stuff of The Minority Report and Philip K. Dick.

An inscription as simple as Your Uncle Frank can take on strange meaning when written on the back of a banal photo.

What would you have me write on the back of this one?