Picture Day

I absolutely hate having my picture taken. I know hate is a strong emotion, but that is my verb I am using and I’m stickin’ to it. I know they are unavoidable, but that doesn’t mean I have to like the process. In my 6 years of teaching, I have managed to avoid getting my picture taken three of those years. I had enough pictures taken of me the last five days of October of last year (when The Moving Wall was in town) to last me the rest of my life and my children’s lives. Although I know that I have lost fifty pounds in the past year, when I look at a picture of me, I can’t see where I have lost any. I think I can now understand how people with eating disorders can be skin and bones and still think they are a tub of lard. We do have the yearly ritual of having family group pictures made at the reunion we have every year. I consider the photographer of those shots (usually a cousin) to be a professionally paid redneck photographer. We actually counted the double chins on family members in one of those pictures from a few years ago and we stopped when we got to 24! I used to think that I was developing a horrific case of wrinkles. Then I replaced the mirror in my bathroom and discovered that my wrinkles were actually the cracks in the glass-the result of the obligatory perusal of myself in the mirror just before I leave the house. When one of my students ask me if I have a mirror, I just get this hysterical laugh and look at them as if they have asked me if I have a million dollars!