…are pointless, irritating, and a waste of my time. Although they did mean I got to spend quite a few hours doing very little in my school gym with some very cool people, so it was worth my while in that regard. Don’t you just admire how I launch into a blog that really, by all rights, should have been posted several weeks ago without even mentioning how late it is? Yeah, me too. I’m brilliant, I know, you don’t need to tell me. Although the ego boost would be welcomed.
Now that I’ve inflated my head unnecessarily and lost 98.9% of my readers to sites with more talented, frequently-updating and modest bloggers, let’s get back on topic. School photos irritate me. For many reasons. And while I’m certainly not trailblazing here, I’m still going to put my two cents in. Or, at the way I’m going, forty-two dollars.
If you’re unfamiliar with the process, or softened by years of having left school, let me paint the picture for you. Uncomfortable private school uniform buttoned up all the way, a uniform rule you rarely abide by of a normal school day, and one that is causing you to frequently make strangled noises as you fight for air. Frumpily attired in your potato sack and foam-shouldered blazer, you still make every effort to preen and look “nice” for what you know will be a day of smiling inanely at shiny camera lenses, the inevitable effect being a terrible picture regardless of your effort. Unless you’re that one girl who always looks perfect, in which case watch out for mobs of angry average-faced people trying to bitch-slap you into next week. The entire affair is not at all helped by the wind, which savagely destroys your attempts at taming the wild flyaway hairs that seem to erupt from your head at most unfortunate times, and the schedule, which is an hour and a half behind.
This is ridiculous for so many reasons. For starters, why do we bother having classes on this day at all? Don’t get me wrong, I’d much rather be chatting with friends in a long queue than attending geography (a subject with which I share an intense mutual dislike), but when some people are in class and others aren’t, it leads to missing out on potentially important information pertaining to the excursion to some freezing place that you may or may not be attending tomorrow. Point and case.
Secondly, these photos have no purpose. To all intents and purposes, they are fakes. People go to extremes on photo day to look nice. The narcissists cake their faces with make-up, the sloths comb their hair and wear their uniform correctly for the first time in months. There are very few people who appear as they do on a regular school day on photo day, so why bother? The photos aren’t an accurate representation of what we do at school, unless what we do at school is sit up straight, move our arses forward – wait, no, back a fraction, on our stools, rotate mindlessly, lift our chins, take our hair off our bloody shoulder thankyou very much, and then smile at the count of three to be blinded by a camera flash. No, I didn’t think so. If you want memories of the school years, take photos of us actually learning. Or whatever it is we do on a normal school day. And if you so desperately want to see how your child has changed through the years, then take your own photos, naturally, and show your child as they actually are. All of my photos would be of me sleeping or eating.
Most irritating, however, are the long waits throughout the day. Waiting in line for the photo before you to finish. Waiting for that one person who had two photos scheduled at the same time. Standing on the top row of the stands, feet and butt aching, trying not to topple off backwards and ripple their curtain. Waiting for the photographers to be entirely satisfied with the angle.
Suffice to say that I was an angsty, annoyed, annoying (probably) little shit today.
“One, two, three, say ‘happy!’”
Happy is not where it’s at. Try royally pissed off, and you might be a little closer to the mark.