Of course, one of the really terrible things about being a public school teacher is that I get my photo taken every single year, creating a year-by-year pictorial timeline of my entire life.
"School Picture Days" are one of those things I would have been content to leave behind when I graduated from high school. I mean, who needs the stress of having to coordinate clothes, hair, jewelry, and makeup with the pressure of knowing that one photo (taken by a photographer who has apparently set a personal goal to snap all photos in the nanosecond the subject's backside hits the twisty stool...a little warning would have been nice, Mr. Photographer!) would be the main source for your peer's memories of you? I'm so glad that I am a teacher now and far, far above the shallow physical appearance concerns of the junior high kids that surround me.....
Ha! hahaha ha ha! Chortle,chortle, giggle, laugh, snort. Yeah right.
Picture day was last Thursday. Here is how my official 2008-2009 school year photo turned out...
...just kidding. I wore an orange shirt on picture day. This was the day before when I assigned my kidlets 5 minutes worth of vocabulary homework.Before I get to my official 2008-2009 school photo, I thought I should provide some sort of evidence that there have been school pictures taken of me that wouldn't turn wanna-be-Greek heroes into stone. Here I am in Kindergarten. Pretty cute, right?
And my luck continued on into the 1st grade. You all remember 1st grade, right? That's the year when coolness is measured in missing teeth. I was pretty darn cool that year.
My front teeth came in with a vengeance in 2nd grade. It took three years for the rest of my head to grow to a corresponding size.
We are going to skip 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade because my insurance plan doesn't cover hard-core psychiatric treatments. Instead we will skip right to 6th grade. Remember crimping irons, ladies? Well my crimps were old school...tiny little braids with pink foam rollers in the ends. It's a good thing my mom was also an excellent personal stylist because I'm pretty sure there is a good chance I would have been just as happy to have the photo taken with the braids and curlers. Thanks Mom!
And here I am in 7th grade, my last sans-glasses year, and the same age that my kidlets are now. That blows my mind. Really.
And now the moment you have all been waiting for, my official 2008-2009 school picture. Drum roll please....
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Ta Da!
It's not exactly Vogue-cover-worthy, but I've had worse. so now I can get back to the important things in life... shopping for an outfit for next years photo. After all, school picture day 2009 is only 359 days away!
