Photoshopper

I once had to fill in a job application form that asked, “If you had a superpower, what would it be?” and I wrote down, “photoshopper”. Now, I realise most of you will probably tell me that’s NOT a superpower – I mean, we’ve all tweaked stuff on our phones, haven’t we? (I have a particularly fetching photo of myself with a friend where she is surrounded by stars and I am sporting reindeer’s antlers and a little black button nose.) But I want you to try reading that word again: it’s not photo shopper but photos hopper. For some reason I can’t explain, I have the ability to use photos to hop in and out of time and space – and when I do that, I find that reality bends to shape itself into the new scenario I’ve created.

Let me explain...

A little over a year ago, I was sorting through the photos on my phone, trying to delete a few to free up some space, when I had the bright idea to start messing around with a new photoshop app I’d downloaded. There was a picture I’d taken at a party where I’d had a huge crush on one of the boys there – Brian somebody or other. Every time I tried to pluck up the nerve to talk to him, this annoying girl, Jessica, butted in instead; and in the photo, she has her arm around Brian possessively as if to say, “Back off, Bitch. He’s mine!” I’m pretty sure they left the party together soon after the picture was taken.

What would happen, I wondered, if I cut around Jessica’s image and replaced it with my own? I’d worn jeans to the party, but there was a much better photo of me somewhere in a skimpy black dress that fairly sizzled. If I stuck that next to Brian, I could pretend I’d worn it to the party and that he’d spent all night talking to me and not Jessica.

Once I clicked on ‘replace’, everything started getting weird. First the photo shimmered, then the entire room, and I found myself in my skimpy black dress, standing next to Brian at a party that had definitely happened several weeks ago. Jessica was nowhere in sight – but even if she had been, Brian wouldn’t have noticed her anyway: his eyes were practically out on stalks as he gazed at me in a dress that left very little to the imagination.

We left the party together five minutes later. I won’t go into any more details but suffice it to say that there wasn’t a lot of talking going on. Things were just getting very interesting indeed when the shimmering began again and I found I was back in my room, about half an hour after I’d left it, wearing my skimpy black dress. What was more, Brian’s number was now stored in my phone – and judging by the texts, we’d been seeing each other since the night of the party.

I experimented again, of course – I was more than a little curious to see what other parts of my past I could change. My brother’s always been a bit of a musical genius – he was playing the piano at three and every year he wins countless awards at all sorts of music festivals. I’ve always felt slightly left out, so I decided to photoshop myself into a picture of him receiving a trophy for ‘Best Performer Under 16’. It was an amazing feeling to stand there, holding the trophy instead of him – and even better when I came back to reality to find that I was an accomplished pianist. Like I said, reality reshapes itself to fit the photo. Unfortunately, I was also under sixteen and there was no way I was going to put myself through the last years of high school again. My new-found musical ability vanished instantly as soon as I took myself out of the photo and put my brother back where he was supposed to be.

After a while, I began to wonder if I could photoshop other people’s photos as well as my own. My friend Katie had once met the movie star, Marlon Gable, outside a Piggly Wiggly – I say ‘met’, but it was more a case of spotting him getting out of his car and ambushing the poor guy so she could get a photo with him – and she’d never stopped showing off about it. The incident must have happened three months prior to my first photoshop, so there was no danger of me suddenly finding I was a twelve-year-old or anything ridiculous like that.

This time, all went well. I found myself standing next to a grinning Hollywood actor who actually asked me for my phone number before kissing me on the cheek and scooting off to buy his groceries. What I hadn’t anticipated was that he’d start texting me at very inopportune times – and sometimes with pictures of his own that I definitely couldn’t show to anyone else. The incident brought a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘celebrity stalker’.

Eventually, Brian discovered Marlon’s texts and accused me of cheating on him. I protested I’d only met the guy once – and that ‘met’ was hardly the word for a hastily snapped photo in a supermarket parking lot, but he wouldn’t listen. Within days, he’d started seeing Jessica instead – I suppose that’s proof that the universe eventually re-rights itself when it’s been squeezed out of shape. Give it enough time and the present will always catch up to where it should be.

From time to time, I thought about using my superpower to help people. Would it work, I wondered, if I could photoshop an online news article and prevent someone from burning to death or being drowned or run over? These heroic desires were thwarted when I realised that articles never show someone in the midst of the disaster that killed them: they just show you pictures of the victims looking their best on a day when they didn’t die. There had to be something I could do to make my own existence worthwhile, though – what was the point of having an amazing ability if I’d only used it so far to get a boyfriend I’d subsequently lost and acquire a hard to get rid of stalker?

I decided to carry out what random acts of kindness I could with my photoshopping. The local paper ran a story on a girl my age who volunteered three times a week in an old people’s home. I replaced her smiling face with mine, determined to bring a little joy into these senior citizens’ lives. For several weeks, I emptied bedpans, wound knitting wool and played pinochle, bringing joy to the old dears’ hearts; however, I found that I was also living out the home life of Laura Jane Martin as well as taking her place in the care home. I suddenly had an alcoholic father and three younger sisters in a house that was half the size of the one I was used to.

It was obviously time to return to my own life, so I decided to say goodbye to my favourite resident, a Mrs Hansen who was slightly senile but a real sweetie.

“Did I ever show you the picture of me with Elvis Presley?” she asked, fumbling around in her handbag for a tattered snapshot.

My heart stood still as I stared at them both. Would my photoshopping work, I wondered, if I took a photo of a photo and then edited myself into that?

It certainly worked. I found myself standing next to The King himself, scarcely able to believe what was happening.

I should have remembered how time readjusts. For me to be the age I was in the picture with Elvis, my body when I returned to the present was that of a woman in her late seventies – and like many others of my generation, I have no idea how to use a cell phone. I can’t switch the damn thing on, let alone figure out how to use those app things. I think I may be stuck here for good.