Flashbacks to childhood

Today at work we had to take pictures for our website, and when we got through I felt like going home and eating a gallon of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. I had no idea I had such memories of humiliation from taking school pictures. I was joking to everyone about hating taking pictures, as I do, but then when it was really my turn to be photographed, I remembered exactly why. It was like someone had shoved me in a time machine and tossed me back to being nine years old. Totally against my will, I think I need hardly say.

When I was in elementary school and they would do our school pictures, the photographer would always click, click, click, get through all my classmates. But that never happened with me. The photographer (it was always a dude) would say “Smile for Barney!” which made me want to bite, and he would take the picture. He would scrutinize the camera critically, then say, “Okay, sweetie, one more. Cheese!” At this point I would still be capable of lying to myself that the picture was bad because he’d mentioned Barney and I was seven or eight and thus far too mature for Barney, and I had made a bad smile out of annoyance. Click. Examine. Dubious suggestion that we try it again. (Here my self-deception about Barney began to break down.) Click. Scrutinize. Repeat. I honestly don’t know if this happened to everybody – it seemed to only be me – but it has evidently left scars.

(I will say that my sister Bonnie always took ages to get her picture finished. However, I believe this was due to her refusal to cooperate, because I remember one particular instance where she irritated the short bald photographer so much that he turned red like a short bald tomato and screamed at her for five minutes before carrying on.)

I take terrible pictures. It is just a fact of life. But I feel very wretched when I have to take a picture, just me by myself, and the person taking the picture makes four or five or ten valiant tries to get a good one, then finally gives up in despair and assures me the one they have is pretty, which – I can tell by their faces and I know from experience – it never, ever is. I try and try to convey to them that there will never be a good picture, so they might as well settle for the first bad one and spare me the extended flashbacks to my childhood trauma. It’s pointless because nobody ever believes me. They always want to be all Oh I’m sure that’s not true (yes it certainly is true), and furthermore they think that they will be the one to change my mind for me by taking the most beautiful picture ever. It's sweet but they are always, always wrong.