"Senior" Picture and Other Matters

I just got my senior pictures, which were taken last week. No really compelling reason exists for my having delayed my senior portrait until my second year of university attendance. I did have a a yearbook photo taken at the studio that was taking all students' yearbook photos for my school, but my face was bruised from an accident, and even with heavy cosmetic application and major retouching (made even easier with computerized enhancements)  the best of the shots wasn't terribly flattering.

My appointment for that particular photo sitting had been made more than two months in advance when my crutch got caught in the grout of my pseudo-relatives' old apartment, causing me to fall  on my face. The stitches or the residual scar under my chin wouldn't show, but not much of my face was spared from either bruising or swelling.  A couple of days after it all went down, it occurred to me that the photo shoot was only three weeks away and that, while the swelling would probably be gone, the departure of the discoloration might not happen in that three weeks. I was in Utah at the time, but I googled the studio, got the number, and called them in an attempt to reschedule. The person who answered the phone insisted that they were booked solidly and that no openings were available before the yearbook's deadline for inclusion. I would have had no problem with being excluded from the photo section of the yearbook, but I knew just how big a conniption fit my mother would have pitched, so I didn't cancel the appointment.

When my mom first saw me following the face plant, two weeks later and one week before the scheduled portrait sitting, she freaked out. She called the studio in attempt to reschedule (I told her it was futile) and was told that had she called a week or two earlier, a change could have been made, but it was too late. ?!?!?!?!?

So I went to the studio at the appointed day and time and had my blue, purple, and yellow face photographed. (Depending upon the depth of the bruising, the contusions were at different phases of healing, hence the multi-colored effect.) The proof we selected for the yearbook was a waist-up shot  barely showed my face, much less my bruises, in the 2.5" by 1.5" or whatever the small size that was allotted for each senior's photo. I suppose anyone who looks at the yearbook will wonder why I chose a picture in which I can only marginally be distinguished from Osama bin Laden, but that was and continues to be the very least of my concerns.

Other things happened during my senior year of high school that moved portrait sittings from the back burner to entirely off the stove in terms of priority. Neither I nor my parents thought about it last year, either. This summer I had an auto accident in which an airbag deployed, leaving its own telltale fresh but temporary discoloration. For some inexplicable reason, this caused my mother to think of the photo shoot. The across-the-street neighbors in our present location operate a photography studio.  My mom set up an appointment for October, and I had pictures taken last week.

My dad wanted me to leave my hair curly for the picture, but that point wasn't negotiable. My hair didn't turn out great when I straightened it that day, so I ended up choosing one of the wind-blown shots, since it didn't particularly matter in those shots that my hair actually looked as though it had been styled by a blind person wearing gardening gloves.  The picture is far from the most glamorous senior portrait ever taken, but at least I don't look in the picture as though I just returned from a date with Mike Tyson.

If you didn't know, the picture to the left of this of this blog (the larger one at the top; the smaller black-and-white picture was from when I was almost six)  is my official "senior portrait," albeit two years late. Since I'm seventeen, I can rationalize that I'm now the age most people are when they have their senior pictures taken, anyway.