First off, have you seen what a school picture packet looks like these days?
When our 7-year-old brought home his first one a couple of years ago as a kindergartner, we found an order form in his backpack that was only slightly less imposing than an application for a first-time home loan.
Thinking that it would be easier to use the company’s website, I jumped online. It wasn’t easier. There were actually more options available, which didn’t seem possible.
When I was in elementary school, I remember the whole picture thing being pretty cut-and-dried. As far as packages, there were two choices:
Package A (“Economy Pack”): 1 – 8 x 10 / 2 – 5 x 7 / 4 – wallets
Package B (“Excess Pack”): 8 – 8 x10 / 16 – 5 x 7 / 1200 – wallets
If your parents really loved you, they’d pawn off something of value, like a kidney, and order
package “B” just to help you save face, even though there was no chance in hell they could
possibly give away all those pictures. You definitely didn’t want to be the only kid in line
comparing picture packets whose parents hadn’t selected “B.” Your family really didn’t have enough relatives/friends to send more than two 5 x7s and a couple of wallets to?
Package “A” may as well have been “The Leprosy Pack.”
Those were simpler days. Picture packets today have package options “A” through “Z”, ranging
from the lower-end “Mom Washes and Reuses Ziplock Baggies Pack” to the ultimate “Second
Home Mortgage Pack,” which includes a bronze bust of your child as well as a life-sized Fathead
poster.
We finally settled on package G, the “One Year of Tuition at a Community College Pack.”
After consulting our financial advisor and making our package choice, we moved on to
backgrounds, which gives you that same feeling of the low-simmering rage you experience when
being overwhelmed by the paint samples display at Home Depot (“My vote is for Bloody
Massacre Red, Honey.”)
There were a dizzying array of backgrounds available online, including 304 color shades with
names like “Individual Amazon Rain Forest Leaf in Direct Sunlight Green” and “Mom Backed
Over the Dog This Morning in a Rush to Get Out of the Driveway Because We Were Late Due to
Her Taking an Hour to Pick Out the Perfect Shirt for My School Pictures Blue.”
You can also choose superimposed background scenery like “Cloudy Sky” or “Mountain Range”
or “Hurricane Irene ‘Bout to Bitch Slap Yo Ass.” For those families desiring a less-traditional
look, images such as “God’s Glaring over Your Shoulder and He Looks Pissed,” “Random Man
Having Colonoscopy,” or “Prison Cell: You May as Well Get Used to It” are also available.
When we were in elementary school, I remember the background color palette consisting of
two pull-down projector screens, blue or gray, and you had no say in which one you’d get. You
just went over and sat on the carpeted box and then the photographer pulled down one of the
two screens, basing his decision solely on which would make you look homlier because that was
his job.
People are supposed to look like dopes in their elementary pictures. I’m sure that every time
my dad took out his wallet-sized image of me and showed it to his co-workers they said all of
the right things — “You have a kid?” — but what they were really thinking was, “Holy shit! What
a homely-looking little turd!” which was a serious feather-in-the-cap of the photographer.
That’s why looking at elementary school pictures is so fun. You look like a dumbass, everybody
else looks like a dumbass, and as a culture, we bond through our dumbassedness. It’s beautiful.
“Retouching” was another option available to us as parents with our son’s school pictures.
Really. This has to make your kid feel good. It’s like checking “De-Uglify.”
Plus, I’m thinking that I’ve already paid medical professionals quite handsomely for that Harry-
Potter-like scar zig-zagging down my child’s forehead, so it’d better damn well be in his picture.
Instead of “Retouching,” they should just have an option where they’ll send you photographs of
a better-looking kid instead.
When my son got home with his first school pictures, he said, “Hey, Dad. We got our pictures
back today, but they accidentally gave me someone else’s.”
“No, that’s what we ordered,” I told him. “Just hand ‘em over, Shrek Boy, and get outside. I
need to send one of these off to your Grandma.”
About the Writer
Chase McFadden is a writer, blogger, husband, father, and semi-professional Jedi. His hobbies include humming “Party in the USA” by Miley Cyrus… and that’s pretty much it. He blogs about life with Kick Ass Wife and his four young children at Some Species Eat Their Young.
About Guest Writer
School pictures are always bad. I’m the queen of bad school pictures. In grade five I had a mullet. I tried to soften the look with some dangly heart earrings, but nothing can tame the savageness of a mullet.
I teach high school now and our picture day was two weeks ago. They arrived on Monday and I was so enthralled with my photo I immediately made it my profile picture on Twitter. Pure awesomeness.
Twitter Name: aimeewhitbread
A mullet would look sweet with that ‘stache. Pure awesomeness, indeed.
Twitter Name: Chase_McFadden
Best…Post…EVER because I can relate so well to it! My daughter is in Pre-K and brought home a form for Picture Day scheduled for Ocotber and I am already hyperventillating with it all!
The A and B packages were so much easier in my day. All these options we parents have now is driving me insane.
At least they gave you some time to agonize over it. Hoping they’re homely.
Twitter Name: Chase_McFadden
Remember the good old days where the lady just twisted your head unnaturally to the extreme right then smoothed your post-PE hair with a comb and told you to smile? Blue/Gray background only.
I love my son, but the kid almost guarantees me a dorky picture every year. He doesn’t know how to fake smile and the result is embarrassing… for him not me. I think it’s AWESOME!
Twitter Name: angieuncovered
I never understood the head twist thing, but it definitely guarantees a weird look.
Twitter Name: Chase_McFadden
I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that they have you purchase the photos BEFORE you even get to see one. My son’s picture day smile looks like someone shoved a pole up his pooper. Always.
And, for the record, I find 8 x 10 school photos obnoxious. Five by seven is plenty big.
Twitter Name: msmegan
No crap. Why should we pay for them before we know if they’re sucky enough? Sounds like your son’s smile is right on target.
Twitter Name: Chase_McFadden
I was shocked at how much photos costed and how little you actually get. I remember when I was a kid my parents would take me to Sears and I would get hundreds of those micro wallets and I would try to write notes to each of my friends on them-it was crazy.
Twitter Name: DExtraordinaire
Pictures at Sears. Nice. I remember getting some at Kmart. Blue-light special on my dumbassedness.
Twitter Name: Chase_McFadden
My 6 year old daughter insists on the “I’m so exceptional, I have LASER BEAMS SHOOTING OUT OF MY HEAD” background. She likes to class things up.
Twitter Name: chickybaby
We had that background for our wedding pics. Off the charts.
Twitter Name: Chase_McFadden
I remember having slightly more choices than blue/black…I think we also got purple and green, but nowhere near the options kids have these days. It’s crazy to have to order them ahead of time though. We had to pick the background and then got to decide based on how crappy or not they turned out if we were buying them. I think standardized photos of all kinds are made to look bad…driver’s license, passport, work ID. I am ecstatic when one of them turns out well. Usually, just like school photos, they don’t, and that’ll be the one you’re forced to show all the time.
Twitter Name: phoenixxphyre
Yeah, standardized photos do tend to look crappy. Bet there are a lot of school photographers who moonlight at the DMV.
Twitter Name: Chase_McFadden
Haha wouldn’t doubt it.
Twitter Name: phoenixxphyre
I clicked over from your fabulous blog which I follow.
I laughed out loud at “de-uglify” and I am reading this at work. NSFW, dude.
I have five kids (20, 19, 17, 5 and 3) so I have filled out my share of these forms over the past 15 years and it has changed so much.
Recently, my 17 year old took his senior pics and the “retouching” is now called “Artist Touch”.
You’ve seen the (d)evolution of school pics, no doubt. And Artist Touch. That is priceless.
Twitter Name: Chase_McFadden
I was going to say something really witty and complimentary here, but my little Taz just started jabbering nonstop in my left ear. That’s about all my brain can process.
Great post, my friend. You make me laugh. out. loud.
Twitter Name: annie6rc
That’d be cool if someone came up with a clever acronym to express the sentiment of laugh out loud. I bet it’d catch on. Thanks, Annie.
Twitter Name: Chase_McFadden
My new acronym for joking with sarcasm: C.H.A.S.E.
;)
Twitter Name: annie6rc
Too too funny. As a teacher at a private school, I too have to get pictures taken every year (the school uses them for promotional purposes – pretty sure mine’s use for Halloween).
This year I opted for retakes. When I got the retakes they looked identical to my first set. I guess that’s as good as it gets.
(But I did choose the background with the fish).
Great post!
Twitter Name: LShirtliffe
Promotional purposes. That sounds interesting. The fish background is always a safe bet.
Twitter Name: Chase_McFadden
I’ve been lucky the last couple years at my son’s middle school since they do pictures on registration day and the photographers do it all digital now and will show you the pic. And they’re happy to redo them right then if your kid looks weird. This year they did it once school started and of course it looks like shit.
PS. Just WAIT till your kid’s a Senior in HS and you have to buy Senior Portraits. KA-CHING!!!
That would be so awesome if you asked the photographer to retake it because it looked too good. Ka-ching!
Twitter Name: Chase_McFadden
My school pictures featured a shadow on my right nostril (left, if you were looking AT the picture, which I tried to keep people from doing as much as possible) that looked like I had a giant black booger in my nose.
Just on the one side.
Every. Single. Year.
They didn’t have the de-uglify box to check back then. Of course they didn’t.
We just ordered pictures of our kids not only for school, but through their karate studio. My son picked a background that boasts (and I’m not kidding) an giant American flag, an enormous bald eagle AND lightening bolts shooting from his head.
A single black nostril would have been an improvement…
Twitter Name: julie gardner
Maybe you always had a booger? One of the perks of picking. And your son’s karate pics? Yes! It’s the Ricky Bobby background! I would totally get that for my kids. And myself.
Twitter Name: Chase_McFadden
“Retouching” was another option available to us as parents with our son’s school pictures.
Really. This has to make your kid feel good. It’s like checking “De-Uglify.”
That is good stuff, Chase!
I have to say my my son has not yet come home looking like a doofus in his school pictures, but he has just entered 7th grade, the year I refer to as “Proof that G-d is cruel” as most kids have braces and glasses and zits. And if you are a boy, your voice is changing and you are starting to grow bad facial hair. Or not, which is just as bad.
I am pretty sure I just jinxed him. ;-)
I have to admit: I kept waiting to see an old picture of you.
Twitter Name: rasjacobson
Cross your fingers. This might be the year!
As a side, I don’t have braces, but otherwise I’m pretty much a dead ringer for a 7th grade boy based on your definition. That’s a bit humbling.
Twitter Name: Chase_McFadden
My oldest is 18 and recently graduated HS. I have NEVER bought those overpriced lousy pictures!
What? Overpriced, yes, but lousy to last a lifetime.
Twitter Name: Chase_McFadden
Maybe… Kid’s pics ‘professional’ shots immortalized in an annual and on student cards. Far prefer to take my own ‘first day of school’ every year. More meaningful to me and I can delete the crap shots :)
Took son’s grad shots in cap and gown in our gardens. To me, can’t get better than that. Money not the motivating factor. Just would rather have pics that MEAN something to us. Student pics just don’t do it for me.
Interesting though, my parents bought the A package each and every year for me and my five siblings. Ouch, pricey but that was before the days of digital I suppose. Or they just loved us more? ;) (No, thinking it came from their early days when photos of themselves rare when growing up…)
De-uglify. Brilliant! Here’s a question I have: what possesses middle-school girls to do something whack with their hair for picture day that they never do any other day of the year? I’ve seen six years of picture days now and can confirm that it only occurs during the middle school years. Grade 6-8 pictures look like someone else’s kids. Also? I had to work early this year on picture day and my husband was home. The boy wore his I heart Bacon shirt.
Twitter Name: JM_Randolph
Great point about the hair. Picture day may not be the best time to try out a new style, but it’s memorable when they do.
I Heart Bacon would be a great background choice.
Twitter Name: Chase_McFadden
Hahahahaahaha!! I wish I could get “de-uglify” on all our family photos, too. No matter how hard we try someone’s got their finger up their nose or their butt to the camera. Yeah, we’re a photogenic crew.
Twitter Name: coolwhipmom
Don’t even get me going on family photos. We need a “de-crotch grab” option, as well. Sometimes even for the kids.
Twitter Name: Chase_McFadden
I gave up on school pictures, partly because they always suck but also because all the package options gave me an aneurysm one year. It ruptured the following year during picture time. I’m damn lucky to be alive.
Twitter Name: Izzymom
I bet that a lot of nervous breakdowns can be attributed to ordering school pictures, as well.
Twitter Name: Chase_McFadden
It was school picture day here today. The dopey ones are the framers in our home. (Well, they’re the only type we get back but I feel better pretending I choose them.) Those dopey pics capture our kids as they are. Odd.
Hilarious, Chase!
Thanks, Amy. I agree: non-dopey pics of our kids wouldn’t even be them. School pics really capture who they are.
Twitter Name: Chase_McFadden
Seriously, the excerpt about duping the editor shows up? Well, this was a fun run at Aiming Low.
Twitter Name: Chase_McFadden