Let’s all look back on our time in high school. Imagine it’s the last days of May. You can finally go to the beach or whatever hot-weather locale the attractive kids frequent. Your skin is darker than it should be considering you play Counter-Strike for five hours on any given day. School is ending and you’re looking forward to your senior year. The one thing that really hammers that point home is that you’ve got senior pictures coming up. “Oh fuckin’ boy!” you think. “Here’s my chance to etch my likeness in the annals of my public school district for all eternity!”
Well, like any good fairy tale (where I’m the princess), the ending is quite a disappointment. My picture looked like some retarded fourth-grader went over it with tracing paper and pastel crayons. It didn’t matter that I was tan; the Goddamned photographer’s flood light looked like our sun viewed through the Hubble Telescope. My skin was basically translucent, and the fact that I had, on a whim, slicked back my already receding hair sealed my fate. Now my awful, gaping visage is immortalized on the high SAT score wall of my school, forever the target of scorn from children seven years younger than I. They don’t care that I did well on a standardized test, they just like to point out my similarity to Gollum from Lord of the Rings.
So when I walked into the basement of the New University Union last semester seeking to have my picture taken for Binghamton’s prestigious yearbook, I still harbored feelings of reluctance. Still, I had cleaned myself up better. My beard, not present in high school, was well kept. My hair, mostly gone, was shorn very short. “How,” I figured, “could this go wrong?”
Well, needless to say, it went very awry. I don’t blame myself though. No, anyone who has had an awful yearbook photo taken should know not to curl up into the fetal position and sob uncontrollably. Blame the photographer.
“Straighten your back,” he says. “Okay, feet together. No, look here. Look at my finger. Head up. More. No, down now. Sorry, look up more. Shit, down. Damn, split the difference. Alright, that’s okay. Smile. Now don’t. Wear this hat. Clutch your chest. Now give me angry. Arch your back. Show me those titties.” How the fuck am I supposed to even emit an inkling of my natural charisma when this doozle is barking orders at me like a jack-booted Blackshirt?
I want to be remembered the way I want to be remembered. I don’t want to look back and remember some drill sergeant with a flashbulb trying to squeeze my bulbous freak-head into a tiny mortarboard. I want the picture of me downtown with a beer in hand, cocking an eyebrow and flashing a stupid-looking smile. Instead, I’ve got Ansel Adams dictating my every movement like I’m Nat Turner pre-rebellion. Yes, that was a very history-heavy reference and it barely makes sense. That’s how awful it is to be photographed by these people.
So now both my high school and my college senior portraits look like shit. In retrospect, I wish I had stood up for myself and proclaimed, from the bottom of my stomach, that I would not raise my chin up any higher. I can’t go back in time (yet) but what I can do is warn you all: when the bad picture man tells you to smile, pull your pants down and beg for the flash. Be remembered the way you want. If it turns out badly, then at least it’s not because you were coerced into it. It just means you’re ugly.