Worth a Thousand Words

What is it about school portraits that make them so horrible? It’s uncanny, really. The photographers take these photos for a living. It is what they do every day. Why are they so bad at it? I have no doubt the lighting in the cafeteria sucks, but surely Photoshop is available to these alleged professionals. And it’s not like they don’t get any practice. They do this photo stuff twice a year at every school in the country, and there’s got to be at least 100,000 of those, right?  

I hold, in my hand, the proofs of both my daughters’ school portraits. I would post them along with this blog, but I have been forbidden not only from purchasing them but also from snapping a picture of them with my iPhone. My children prefer to pretend that these photos never existed, dreading the possibility that these unflattering images might resurface in a few years, as most embarrassing things on the internet tend to do. And I even considered buying this year’s portraits because they aren’t half bad. My daughters almost look human. Well, one of them does. The other one looks like an unfortunate hunchbacked troll with its teeth clenched in a grimace, but still pretty.

Part of why  the photos suck has to be the mass produced quality of the portraiture. If you had half a day to snap almost two thousand portraits, you better believe you would have some eyelids barely open and a snarled lip here or there. No one can make an entire school body look good, especially when virtually none of them want to have their picture taken. It’s not like a piece of their soul will be taken from them, but still, students, normally obsessed with selfies and Instagram and all things photogenically narcissistic, treat every school portrait like they are standing for a mug shot.

This year’s batch of pictures features a lovely natural backdrop, complete with an artificial tree trunk. If you look closely, you can see that the tree trunk is actually part of the back drop and not a free standing photo prop against which to lean. The photographer had to direct two thousand surly teens to pretend like they were standing against a tree, pantomime style. No wonder there is an undercurrent of “are you fucking kidding me?” evident in both my daughter’s eyes. What would have made it even better is if all the kids posed in plaid flannel shirts holding axes. Hell, if they did that, I guarantee parents would be lining to buy those photos. I know I would.

When my daughters were little and students at the local Montessori, they had fabulous portraits taken at school. The photographer would set up a bench near some blooming azalea bushes in front of the school, arrange a few potted plants around the bench, and then seat the children in a modest fashion. Combs were handed out for smoothing unruly hair, and angelic faces would beam beatifically at the camera. All the parents bought those portraits, not because they were guilted into it, but because those portraits were fabulous.

Can you imagine if you gave combs to all the students in middle school? They would be used for weapons, or possibly some sort of MacGyvered drug paraphernalia. Not to mention at least half the kids couldn’t use a comb if they tried, thank you Axe hair paste. Even if the hair was smoothed, it wouldn’t distract from the nasty facial expressions and tight lipped fake smiles hiding braces. And don’t forget the soulless eyes. Seriously, post-mortem photography is livelier than a school portrait.

Parents look forward to school photo day when their kids were younger. I know I put great thought  into the dresses the girls would wear, deciding on flattering hairstyles, how if they pulled their skirts down just so, the bruises on their knees might not show. For middle school, photo day isn’t even an afterthought. My daughters didn’t mention it, hoping to avoid it entirely. One child even wore a hand me down of her sister’s from the fifth grade, a shirt that has at least three years of wear and tear on it. Can you imagine if you showed up at Target on a Wednesday morning and someone announced to you it was photo day?

I thought about my own school photos from many moons ago, which also began as an every year purchase before petering out.  I bet my mother stopped buying them around seventh grade, and I know I fought for that one because I thought I looked good, rocking that Lacoste shirt and some wicked center parted bangs. Once you hit the early teens, you don’t really look that much different from year to year, except perhaps for the braces covering yellowing teeth and more than one acne breakout and the rebellious makeup and hairstyles.

I bet most people buy pictures of their kids from kindergarten to fifth grade and then senior year. Face it; from about ten to maybe sixteen, awkward is the dominating trend. Most of us would be better off forgetting some of those choices we made. As far as I know, no photographic evidence exists of my purple hair, circa 1985, much to my children's disappointment.

On second thought, excuse me while I go write a couple of checks to School Portraits, Incorporated. My kids might not want me to buy these shitty photos, but I know my future grandchildren will thank me.

 

Mom's Morning Out

If you have a teenager, when was the last time you spent a full day alone with it? I had that misfortune last week when my daughter had three doctor’s appointments, and let me tell you, I don’t plan on doing that again anytime soon. My daughter, E, is now thirteen, only she thinks she’s sixteen. While she still occasionally wants a hug or to have a conversation with me, she has decided that she knows everything and therefore doesn’t have to listen to her parents or teachers anymore.

Since there is nothing left to learn, she finds the world a pretty boring place, especially the part of the world in which she spends most of her time. Her family is boring, her school is boring, her friends are boring, there’s nothing to do, nowhere to go, blah blah blah. I can’t even understand half her complaints because she has taken to mumbling full time. If I don’t respond to what I can’t hear, then she adds sighing and eye rolling. Three year old tantrums are starting to be a reminder of the good old days, when I could at least pick up my child and cart them off to another room for a time out.

 We started the morning at the orthodontist’s office. E has been wearing orthodontia of some form since she was eight. She’s had four rounds of expanders and has been in braces for over two years now. You would think she’d be pretty eager to get them off, but sadly, no.

It all comes down to rubber bands. Every six weeks we go to the orthodontist, and he gives her a couple of packs of rubber bands which she is supposed to hook in various versions of cat’s cradle inside her mouth. She is to wear them at all times except during meals. She chooses not to.

Instead, she hides her bags of rubber bands in my car or in my purse.  Which means that the braces she should have had removed over a year ago are still hanging out on her teeth. I didn’t realize she could have been train track free for that long because she has forbidden me from joining her for her orthodontist exams, since I talk too much and therefore embarrass her. I wanted to ask her doctor specifically what she needed to do to get those braces off. He said, as politely as he could, that if she would just wear the rubber bands, she would be finished with the braces.

When we got in the car, I said to her, “You want your lecture now or later?”

She said, “I’ll take it now,” and proceeded to lecture me about why she still has her braces on, about how it’s not her fault and she forgets and they hurt and they shouldn’t make that much difference anyway and who cares if her teeth are straight.

“Wait a minute,” I said, “it doesn’t work like this. I am going to lecture you, not the other way around. You are the one who has to sit there and listen.”

I went off on what a waste of everyone’s time it was to continue to go to these appointments if she wasn’t going to do what she was supposed to do. I made her find every package of rubber bands and hold them in her hands to illustrate how many days she has been noncompliant with her treatment. I pointed out that she must really like braces since the only reason she still wears them is because of her. And I raised my voice some, because the more I talked, the better it felt to say everything louder.

 

 

That is a pile of rubber bands, not rubbers.

 

We went home. She stormed upstairs to her room, and I stayed downstairs and took out my frustration on Facebook.

Next it was time to go to the pediatrician. She refuses to see any doctor except the one she has gone to since she was a baby. He now practices on the other side of town, so I indulged her by driving twenty five minutes to get to his new office. She was measured and weighed and had her hearing checked, which, shockingly, was completely normal.  Then the doctor came in the exam room and attempted interaction. He has a thirteen year old daughter as well, so he knows a little about the breed.

He did the usual stuff and then reviewed her growth over the past year. She declared herself fatter than her friends, which is infuriating. She wears a size three jeans, and she is 5’7”. Plus, every afternoon when she gets home from school, she raids the pantry of all its chocolate. Seriously, even the chocolate chips I buy for cookies are half gone, the bag wide open, I might add, just like the pantry doors, which is how I can tell she had been looting. Anyway, she isn’t fat, which the doctor told her in a professional and tactful manner. She interrupted him several times to argue about why she thinks she’s a porker, including bringing up her 80 pound friend who is severely underweight as an example of normal. He ended every sentence with, “What do I know; I’m just a doctor.”

The same thing happened during their argument over the effectiveness of ibuprofen on menstrual cramps. The teen mumbled. The doctor patiently explained how ibuprofen works. Then the teen argued about it some more, with mumbles, until the pediatrician said a variation of his other line, “Well, if I were a doctor, I might know what I am talking about.” Clearly she feels comfortable with him, at least enough to treat him like an idiot, much like she does with her father and me.

Then we drove home again. On the way, she had to tell me when to switch lanes on the interstate, as if she knew what she was talking about. I ignored her and told her what options we had for lunch. Bagels, soup, macaroni and cheese, peanut butter, veggie burgers. She rejected everything and went for a giant bowl of Fruity Pebbles when we got home. Those don't make you fat at all.

After lunch, it was time to go to the dermatologist. I told her I would stay in the waiting room, but this time she insisted I go back with her. She seemed to have lost her will to fight, perhaps because she was sleepy, so she just mumbled at him but kept the arguing to a minimum. He asked her if she had any concerns, and she said no, so I reminded her she was worried about some new moles that had appeared on her youthful milky white skin. He examined them and told her they were looked normal. She glared at me for speaking.

After that appointment, I didn’t drive home. I drove to school.

“Where are we going now?” she mumbled at me.

“School,” I said. “The day’s not over yet.”

“Why can’t I just stay home? I’ve missed most of the day anyway,” she said to me.

“It’s not yet sixth period,” I answered. “If I drive faster, I can get you there in time.”

She mumbled at me and turned to face the passenger window to let me know she was mad at me, again.

The day was all about her, but she didn’t see it that way. She didn’t want to be at school, but she didn’t want to be home. She didn’t want to go to the doctors’ offices. She didn’t want to go back alone, but she didn’t want me there either. She didn’t want to hear what any of her doctors had to say, and she didn’t want to do what she was told to. She doesn’t know what she wants. She wants to be treated like an adult but wants to act like a kid.

No wonder she is tired all the time. That shit is exhausting.

What Passes as an Ordinary Monday

I picked the girls up from school yesterday afternoon and took a short cut down a residential street on our way to the orthodontist's office. My oldest daughter, E, inherited her father's tiny little bird mouth and needs to get an expander now at age 8 so that she can have the railroad tracks in a few years. Luckily you don't see kids with full head gear anymore, but if you did, she would be one of those.

We drove by a man walking his effeminate little dog down the street, happily swinging a bag of feces like he had just come from the penny candy store. I said to my girls, "Hey, that guy is carrying a bag of poop." E was on the other side of the car and could not see him. "I sure hope he has a dog," she said. Bada-bing!


We arrived at the orthodontist's office right on time for her appointment. I signed E in and took my seat in the waiting room. The music is typically loud in his office, and yesterday was no different. The song playing had that pop ballad studio produced quality, and I tried to ignore it while organizing the homework the girls needed to do while waiting. "Christ," sang the unknown to me Christian singer. "Chhrrriiissst, my Savviiooouurrrrr." Oh Christ, indeed. Can we not sit at the orthodontist's office without praising His name?

E went back with the assistant to have an impression of her mouth made while S, my other daughter, and I sat and read a "Minnie and Moo" story. I love Minnie and Moo, and so does S. They are such stupid cows. We tried to ignore the exultation of the satellite radio and finish the story when E came mincing back to us. "Already finished? That was fast."

Dr. J followed her into the waiting area and handed me a slip of paper for the front office staff. "She did great!" he announced in his booming voice. Dr. J has a full beard, rosy cheeks, and a plump little belly. If he grays steadily over the next twenty years, he will look exactly like Santa Claus, and lucky for him, he has the voice and the laugh to complete the look. I have to admit, however, that his jolly takes some of the fear out of going to his office, for both me and my daughter.

"Great, huh? Does that mean she didn't throw up?" I asked him quietly. "Yes, it does!" he shouted. "Yesterday, one girl just gagged once and shot it out, but my assistant took a fast step back and missed it." It never occurred to him that might be a better story to keep to himself and his staff. "She sounds very agile," I replied. I scheduled our next appointments and we left. E still had flecks of white from the impression material on her face.

"How did you do?" I asked her once we got in the car. "I get to eat jellybeans for the next three weeks!" she exclaimed. And she is right, she can. Because after that, eating is not going to be something that brings joy to her. I'll let her figure that out on her own.