To School Pictures

Me. Maybe kindergarten?

Your bangs are too long. Your collar is turned the wrong way. The photographer says, “Smile!” and you squeeze your cheeks all the way back to your ears. You’re trying so hard.

When you’re young, your mom brings out the heavy brush or the ponytail holders that hurt. Or your dad tries to teach you to tie a tie so you can put it on just before the picture. Finally he just ties it himself, loosens it and pulls it, still tied, over your head. He puts it in your bookbag. You never take it out. Shirt buttoned all the way to the top.

Me. 6th or 7th grade.

You’re such a dork. You try every time to be your best.

This picture is you in 3rd grade. You in 8th grade. You in 10th. One pose caught against a grey-blue background, passed around in homeroom 3 weeks later. This is how you smile, how you turn your chin, how you hold your shoulders when you know it counts. It is both the most natural and unnatural pose you make. The one you practice the night before and fail at the morning of.

You’re grown now and gone. You live 658 miles away and you have 7 people reporting to you. The Henderson data is due tomorrow and you just now noticed the words “in aggregate.” You weigh whether or not it’s ok to have a beer while you work? Maybe you should wait?

Keith, 14. And his cool ELO t-shirt

But your parents still love each one. Every wallet size is tucked sequentially into the picture holder or hung on the wall or laid out carefully in the family photo album, your name, year and grade number written in pen underneath each one. They love all the you’s. Even now, you roll your eyes when you see them. They can’t understand why you don’t love them all.