Here it is: my first school picture in a thousand years.
Okay, no. My first school picture since my senior year of college, a photo I only vaguely remember having taken and which I never saw again except for maybe in the pages of the yearbook I didn’t buy. I don’t know why I didn’t buy it. Maybe it’s because I was already a wife by that time and just felt Beyond that sort of thing.
But I digress.
Here is the photo taken of me at Trinity School just one month ago.
Pretty bad, huh?
Pictures like these make me ask myself All Kinds of Questions. Questions like: What was I thinking? And Who did her hair? And Why does an almost-thirty-seven-year-old woman have a pimple on her neck?
Okay. At first glance I didn’t think it was too bad. Not too. I mean, the hair is a little unkempt. The smile is a little… shall we say School-Picture-ish. But what do you want?
And then I brought it home.
Look, Bill. Look at the children’s school pictures! And Look! Look at mine!
And he looked at the pictures, and he smiled at me. He was smiling Really Hard.
It’s not good, is it? I asked him.
And he said, What’s with your shirt?
And that’s when I realized that, although the hand-me-down sweater is actually, in real life, a pretty thing, it is Not Good for a school picture. No. In a school picture, this kind of sweater Says Something. And what it’s saying is: I am trying Way Too Hard.
Yes, the sweater says we are making All Kinds of Efforts to look good here, kind of the way they make efforts when you get your picture taken at Glamour Shots. You know the ones I mean: the pictures where they doll you up until you are nigh unrecognizable and take your photo with weird lighting and hope that somehow you’ll end up looking like you belong on the cover of a magazine.
Which Never happens. I mean, you never look like you belong on the cover of a magazine, and you never end up being on the cover of a magazine.
But I digress.
And there’s nothing Wrong with Glamour Shots. In fact, I think having one’s Glamour Shot taken might be Really Fun. But when your school picture looks like a Glamour Shot, well….
But I digress.
What I realized, looking at the photo with Bill’s help, is that my hair goes up and my sweater goes down on the Same Side, looking as though I met with an oddly angled stiff wind or… or… or something.
Okay, I realize it isn’t that bad. It’s fine. It’s fine. And I’m not vain. Not At All.
But when they offered photo retakes last week, I Was Totally There.
