Kathy Szram spent an entire month choosing photos.
From her son Ben’s birth to his high school graduation, she arranged them all in a row along the hallway of her home in a Chicago suburb. Beside each one, she placed a stuffed animal: the Mickey Mouse from when he was a baby, the rocking horse, every toy arranged in the exact order in which it had entered his life. It was the same scene from ‘Toy Story 3’, the one that made half a generation cry, but this time it was real.
Ben, 18, was about to leave for Loyola University Chicago when he found the hallway set up like a museum of his own childhood. He recorded his reaction, thinking he would send it only to his friends. It took him less than five minutes to edit it. In less than a week, 71 million people had watched a son say goodbye to his childhood hand in hand with his mother.