School Picture Day

This past week was school picture day. Technically, I'd contend that every day is picture day since all class long I catch students taking photos of themselves making pouty faces with their cellphones for their myspace pages. Nevertheless, official school picture day is a big event in just about every student's life.

I goofed big time. About a week prior to the big day, the administration sent the entire English department an email announcing the details, but I managed to either ignore or forget it. On the morning of picture day, I was reminded again and knew I was headed for trouble. Even though I personally didn't think it should be a big deal, I knew that it would not be acceptable to spring this news to my overwhelmingly superficial teenagers.

During each period, I had to drop the "Surprise, it's picture day!" bomb. From the way they reacted, you'd think I had told each of these kids that I had personally shot their parents. They cursed, theatrically fell out of their chairs, and told me that they would rather die than take a picture today when they were not ready for it. They had a lot of complaints. "Why weren't we warned?" I covered up my culpability in this incident by half-truthing and saying I, too, had only found that morning and agreed that it was wrong. "Why are we taking next year's pictures now when we'll look different next year?" Again, I could only agree and admit that the situation was unfair. "How do you expect me to take a picture in this shirt?" Would you rather take it off? I think that might be more embarrassing.

I played ignorant as to what the pictures were for. "I'm told they're for your IDs, so they're not too important" I said. Each time, students would counter, "Everyone knows that they use your ID photo as your yearbook photo! If you have one bad yearbook photo, your social life is over!" Though I can't get these kids to learn the term hyperbole, they certainly know how to use it. I suggested that some of them might want to consider transferring schools to avoid such a situation, but my sense of humor was, as it generally is with this audience, not appreciated.

I attempted to spin the surprise picture day as a good opportunity to forego the usual BS rituals and take a picture as they actually look on an average day. Given the reactions to this statement, I am apparently the stupidest person to ever live for holding this opinion.

Each class had about an hour warning before the photos were actually taken, which turned out to be far too much time. My classroom instantly turned into the backstage of a fashion show. Students swapped clothing and accessories. Some girls applied a full pound of makeup to their faces until they looked like cheap whores - or cheaper whores, I suppose. Others actually plugged in their straightening irons and tugged at their already straight hair. Those who abstained from the primping fest were made to feel stupid and ugly by their peers. "You don't think picture day is important? Do you want to look bad? Do you not want to have friends?" Throughout these moments, I did my best to continue with my planned Romeo & Juliet lesson, but it fell on deaf ears. I asked them to prioritize, only to realize that their priorities clearly differ from mine.

In the gym where the photos were taken, the kids were merciless. Because each student got literally one shot, for better or worse, some of them were competitive and heckling one another in acts of sabotage. The motivation being that their pictures won't look as bad in comparison; aren't they little darlings? A couple students outright refused to pose for a picture altogether, including a girl who had swam in PE earlier in the day and insisted that she could not be photographed because her hair was too wavy, even though it looked no different to me than it usually does. My favorite poser was a girl who was totally not into the picture thing to the extent that when she had her photo snapped, she was so busy text messaging that she didn't even look at the camera. I harangued her for that a bit, but ultimately decided that, if nothing else, the photo accurately portrayed what she does 85% of the day.

The whole experience was so overwhelming, that I must have appeared visibly stressed to the photographer. I wasn't even posing for a photograph, yet ey asked me to "Smile." Ha ha. Talk about saying cheese.