Today I got a flat envelope back from one of those mail-order film processing places. This was a little surprising -- I'd sent in three rolls to be processed a month or so ago, but I'd thought I'd asked for processing for web download, not a CD or other flat delivery.

Sadly, as it turned out, the envelope had gotten horribly mangled and the film lost in the mail. The envelope I got back included my check, which somehow did not fall out of the totally torn-open envelope and a regretful note from the company's customer service department suggesting I fill out a "tracer form" to see if any of the loose film they often receive was mine.

Any loss I might have felt is totally lost in a thick fog of early-onset senility. These were rolls I'd found lying around my room when I moved. I have little idea what was on them. They might have been taken in the past year and never developed -- I was unemployed and didn't have the cash. They might have been taken years ago. They could be of protests, candid shots of friends, scenery, my car, any number of things.

The tracer form is actually rather clever -- it lists categories of people, events, sports, scenery, even types of dress which the photos included. It seems to be developed after years of having people write in and say "You've lost my photos, you know, the ones with that guy in them? I think he was wearing blue?"

I imagine any number of people are happily reunited with their photos every year as a result of this smart little form. However, the form was not intended to help people like me. It will not help the kind of people who develop a handful of film without knowing what's on it, and it will not accommodate frustrated artists.

I realized this as I began searching for a category for "plastic toy horses," which seemed a likely subject of my old rolls. I sold a lot on eBay last year, but also I had a moment where I got really amused by the shape of an unwrapped chocolate Easter bunny and took a series of conceptual shots with the naked brown form among My Little Ponies. The closest thing I found was "Animals," so under "Other," I filled out "Toy horses," but that really needed more explanation. What I ended up with was "Toy horses and Easter candy, fantasy scene on toilet (I'm not making that up.)"

Then I realized they could have been pictures from my birthday, and I added "Birthday party with blue cake and human-shaped pinata in Central Park." I did not want to go into the backstory that the pinata was supposed to be Henry Kissinger but the whole thing accidentally ended up looking like an effigy lynching of a dark-skinned man. Explanation doubtless takes the edge off that story (please know that I feel infinitely more remorse now over the horrible scene than I did when I first wrote about it), but the form was only so big and my handwriting is illegible anyway.

Just to cover all bases, I checked the boxes for "Buildings/brick/two story" and "Hill/mountains/desert/backyard" on the off chance they had been pictures of my house in Queens or my dad's place in Altadena, and "Vehicles/Make: Chrysler Sebring/License Plate New York City" in case they were pictures of the car. I filled out the appropriate addresses and dates and realized I couldn't possibly send this form in.

When they processed this form, would the lab staff look for deserts, backyards, toilets, cake, pinatas, a Sebring, plastic horses and a brick building all in the same place? Would they miss it if they only saw the cake or the car? Would they post my tracer form on a "Greatest Hits" list in their copier room? Man, I don't know if I could hold my head up if they didn't post it there. Something's gotta come of the embarassment of having cared enough to look for the weird photos I only vaguely remember taking. What if someone just threw them out?

What if the film never made it to the processing center? Is it rolling around the floor of a New York City mail processing station? Did someone I'll never know make prints? If you found a shot of what looks like a chocolate d!ld0 being admired by a My Little Pony, please drop me a line. I'd kind of like it back. Better it not be floating around in the world out there.