School Picture

     I know, I know!  I am scraping in at the last possible moment with my school picture.  Let’s face it.  I hate pictures of me.  I always have.  I have always thought I looked ugly as hell in them.  Why?  It is probably because I never had a boyfriend in school.  No one ever asked me to the prom.  Boys didn’t notice I was alive, and because of that I thought something was wrong with me.  As the years went by if they did spark an interest, I was sure there had to be something wrong with them and began to view them with disdain.  Seriously, I did.  I had issues and I am determined that neither of my kids suffer a similar fate.

      Now that both of my kids are in school it seems the thing to do is to notice the opposite sex and hope to sunny Jesus for their approval.  We all go through it, and yes it starts young.  Just the other day my 1st grade son was worried that a little girl that everyone likes, and I do mean everyone, wasn’t in love with him.   I sat him down and told him first off he was way too young to even be worrying about such a thing.   Who truly cares what she thinks?  The same thing is going on with my 6th grade daughter.  She is also too young, but you can expect that kind of behavior.  I have been to both schools and personally, I have seen absolutely no one that has crossed over into movie star gorgeous.  Not one of these kids is all that with a bag of chips, and if they don’t think my kids are special…well the fault is with them.  Yes, anyways I digress.

        School pictures were painful reminders that I was not cute.  Looking back, I may have bordered on cute in kindergarten before I became increasingly cynical but it went down hill from there.     All week I contemplated marching my happy ass up to the attic to sift through mountains of pictures looking for examples of the dreaded school pictures that I could share for this writing prompt.  Fortunately, or unfortunately fate stepped it.  I have been working out lately in an attempt to lose weight.  It seems an impossible task.  What I got for my efforts this week was not the hoped for loss of pounds but a knee that hurt like a bloody bastard.  To my disgust all the doctor’s office could offer for advice is that these things happen when you get old.  WTF!!!  That dirty word mental-pause keeps popping up in conversations and seems to be the flipping excuse for everything or the default excuse of a touch of arthritis from an active youth.

        So here I am, awake at the butt crack of dawn on a Saturday ready to share my senior picture with the world.  Of all the pictures, this one has to be the best.  The irony is that on the day it was taken, it was damn near 90 degrees hotter than hell in July and I was dressed in an oxford shirt, sweater, and jacket sweating like a pig.  At one point during this photo op the photographer noticed the gallons of sweat rolling off of me and decided to turn on this monster industrial fan. Meanwhile, I am standing precariously on tip-toes posed against this rather larger than life wicker chair.  The fan went on, the photographer took position, and I lost my balance, and fell flat on my face laughing like an idiot.  During that awkward display of balance and grace, he snapped this picture.  Honestly it was the best one of the lot and the one my folks and I chose to invest big bucks in to purchase.

        Remembering other school pictures I have taken I am just as happy I didn’t find them.  They were littered with the infamous ones with boogers stuck in my nose one year, ugly grandma glasses from the 70’s, hairdos from hell, and outfits that I should have burned instead of worn for a picture.  There was certainly nothing I wanted out there for the world to see.    Even more disheartening is looking back on this particular photo and realizing I didn’t look half bad.  Why is it always in hindsight that a person truly appreciates anything?