Pictures Of You

My good friend and confidante on the right coast sent me an e-mail attachment that was his purported doppelganger for his high school yearbook photo. The picture was a tasteful black and white head shot of Adrian Zmed. It was an astonishing likeness, I confess, and it made me think about how much hair there used to be. I used to hang around with this guy. This was the guy who used to get all the girls. I used to get all the phone calls after he broke up with all the girls. "No, I don't know when he's coming back to the country. He said something about a five year mission to explore strange new worlds..."
In the meantime, I was the kid who was told by one female classmate in fourth grade, "You ruined the class picture. You look like a walrus." To be fair, she wasn't exaggerating too awfully much. I've never been too fond of having my picture taken, and it shows. There I was, in the second row, looking round and wan, glasses reflecting the photographer's lights. This indignity continued for all the years of my public education. When I was a senior in high school, I got a friend who had graduated the year before to take my picture for the yearbook. I did my best to mat down the unruly mass that was my hair, and selected a flannel shirt that seemed to suggest a certain - oh, I don't know - rustic outdoorsy feeling. We drove up into the mountains where I hopped across a rushing creek and perched myself on a rustic, outdoorsy boulder. My friend shot up most of a roll of film, trying to capture my essence. What we got instead looked a lot like a Coors Commercial.
And what is the punchline for all of this photoplay? Now that I am a teacher, once a year I get to stand in line with my students and wait for each of them to smooth or ruffle their hair, adjust their smiles, and turn their heads just slightly so they aren't staring directly into the camera. Then it's my turn. One of the perks of being a teacher is that I get a free eight by ten of my slowly aging self for - well - posterity. This year's photo isn't nearly as walrus like as last.