I always through grade school – or not always, but I think through, like, junior high and high school when, like, you get most, maybe, conscious of your appearance, I never liked the picture that would be taken. And of course, you didn’t really have any choice in the matter. You kinda had one shot at it. You could only do a retake if, like, your eyes were closed or something and you wouldn’t really see, you know, what your photo was until weeks later. And I just never looked as good as I wanted to. So, when it came time to – as my senior year approached, I was actually really psyched about having an opportunity to have a session with a professional photographer because I knew there were gonna be a bunch of different poses, I could change my clothes and at the end of the process they would do some, like, retouching, you know, if I had a blemish or something, and I just I felt much more confident that through that process I was gonna end up with a couple of photos of myself that I really liked.
So, I mean, it pretty much worked out that way. I had my little photography session and then I got to pick out my poses and was really happy. And then, I don’t know, some months later, I was recognized for a, I dunno, scholarship or award or something. And I lived in a small town, so they tend to put those kinds of things in the paper. So, you know, there I am in the paper, and the picture that they used was a picture from my professional photography session, and it was a pose I didn’t choose. It was a photo that I did not like. So here I was right back in the same position I’d always been in where like this, you know, the photo they’re using to represent me is not the one I would have chosen. And I was so… I was completely mystified. I was like, “How do they… how do they have this picture? Why is this picture even out there?” So I think I went to my – I don’t know. I was trying to track down how that happened, and I don’t know if they got it from the school office and the school office reached out to my photographer. Whatever. Anyway, I had let them know that actually that really wasn’t a photo I wanted used of me. And they were like, “That’s fine.” I think I must’ve contacted my photographer too, and they’re like, “Absolutely.” They got it, they get it, they won’t use that photo again.
So then, it’s like really close to graduation, our yearbooks come out. Seniors in our yearbook have larger photos and they’re in color and I’m, like, so psyched. I flip to the end of the alphabet, you know, where I am. And I’ll bet you can guess which photo it was. It’s the exact same photo that they put in the paper. It was the exact same photo that I had not chosen. It was the photo that I had specifically told them after it appeared in the paper, that I did not want that photo used and that they assured me wouldn’t be. So either they ignored my wishes or they forgot that they’d already submitted it or whatever. So I was like, at the time, it was like tragedy. I was so grumpy about it. You know, because like I said, I built up… I was really just excited about finally getting to choose my own photo and then like this happens. Now, I guess it’s funny and as an adult, I look at the photo that they used and I kind of understood why they chose it. I mean, it looks like… I didn’t think it was flattering to myself, but it was a very serious senior photo. Anyway, whatever. I, like, never forgave that photographer.