Smile! It’s Picture Day!

A candid convo about an outmoded tradition

This week, we tried a new writing style. Instead of a collaborative story with a collective voice, we had a conversation in which we each gave our own insight. Let us know what you think about this style in the comments! We also started a chat for subscribers where we are sharing our spring kid picture experiences. Find it here and tell us all about your picture woes.

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Kara: I got picture burned again.

Bethany: Tell me something I haven’t lived.

Kara: Well, this time it was soccer. The second round of pictures in a calendar year. They set the time for Saturday morning at 8:15 a.m. Really?

Bethany: Mm. Why do they hate us? Last month, we had Teeball pictures smack on hump day in between 3 games IN ONE week.

Kara: Yeah, I guess we have a knack for drawing the short stick? We were hustling all morning. We rolled up a tad late, so I violated the “no drop off in front” rule and threw Tyler (the husbo) and the child out of the car. Since I had been handled by spring school pics just a week beforehand (might as well light $40 on fire), I had decided a hard “no” on round two of soccer pics.

Bethany: What. Soccer is life. I disagree with this decision.

Kara: Moving on. So I finally gathered all the stuff and the toddler from the full-size SUV that I parked deep in the sea of family vehicles. And when I got to the field, I saw Tyler filling out the form. A discussion ensued. Turns out, he didn’t want “to get reamed” by not filling it out.

Bethany: The peer pressure is palpable though. All those clipboards and flashy backdrops and parents swarming about with hairbrushes. It makes me sweat.

Kara: I said to him, “She always burns us. She never smiles big for the individual soccer pics. I was going to skip this one. If anything, buy a team pic and call it a day.” But he was so conflicted, especially because like half the team was missing and the coach was pacing, saying, “I even sent out a calendar invite for this!”

Bethany: Okay, yeah, welp. We were those people for the Teeball “retakes.” They asked everyone to come back two weeks and 23 games later because they didn’t capture the team picture! We were the only ones that didn’t show, out of principle. Now forever labeled the “noncommittals.”

Kara: You are the people who purposely make an incomplete team pic? I can’t deal. Anyway, I left the ultimate decision up to him, but I imposed a max $30 budget. I’m not looking to blow a wad on this.

Bethany: That’s funny you think you can even get two picture magnets for $30.

Kara: Yeah, well, Tyler took forever to fill out the form, which made the coach even more nervous. At one point, the coach looked over at me and asked me, “Does she have a form?” And I just nodded my head over to the side where we both saw Tyler scurrying to finish the form on a clipboard propped up on a random tractor.

Bethany: AHHHHH the clipboards. I’m starting to feel anxious. I can feel my heart beat.

Kara: Welp, eventually Tyler came back. He was standing so tall, so confident, and said, “I went individual.” I just shook my head in silent but observable judgment.

Bethany: I’ll borrow from Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s mother-in-law here: “In every good marriage, it helps to be a little bit deaf.”

Listen, I’m not going to lie. I only purchased the individuals for Teeball, too. Actually paid off in spades when the team retake announcement was made. I had zero investment.

Kara: Um, of course you only did individuals. You relied on good luck and foresight to see group was a losing proposition. But back to soccer, Tyler was invested. He called over our daughter for a pre-pic motivation session. This clearly involved some sort of bribery that I’ll never find out about.

Bethany: “Don’t make a fool out of me in front of your mother….”

Kara: Mmhmmm. So when it was her turn, I saw a glimpse of her smile among our toddler blowing up over the same type of protein bar he eats every single morning. I looked over at Tyler, who had stayed in the same area where the bribery took place, at a safe distance from the toddler and me, likely for fear of “being reamed” if the bribery didn’t work. Turns out, Tyler had pulled it off. He knew it. He felt good about how they would turn out. He looked over at me, smiled big, and gave me the thumbs up.

Bethany: I’m glad everyone left that situation minimally scarred and financially preserved.

I am so baffled by the whole “organized picture taking” experience, let me tell you.

Take school pictures.

You get told way in advance, inevitably forget the date. Perhaps you receive a reminder JUST in time to run a comb through the kid’s hair and scramble to pre-pay $87 for the cheapest package toted “best value” having NO clue what result you will get.

Kara: Remember our Kindergarten pics? I really had it together. I prepaid Lifetouch. I endured a heated battle over appropriate outfit and hairstyle. I was so happy she capitulated with a “boring” white blouse. I duked it out through two French braids. The pic came home two weeks later and she had styled herself at school with a large rainbow bead costume necklace that her friend graciously gifted her the day of.

Bethany: Hah. I remember! At best for these things, the child is smiling some version of a creepy clown or Chandler from Friends that you then have to proudly display every day in the kitchen. I ALWAYS pick the worst shade of background possible to clash with my child’s selected tye-dyed shirt.

Kara: Tye-dyed? You let them wear that?

Bethany: Whatever. Let ‘em live. I didn’t buy that year.

The schools aren’t thrilled about the process either. Let me just tell you. They share. Like my daycare office lady, whose anxiety about the scheduling of the youngest babies and tots both on a Friday was palpable.

“Listen,” she said, “We usually get them done first, Monday, because they’re the hardest. I almost cried when I saw the Angelfish on deck for Friday. We’re going out for sangria when it’s all said and done.”

Kara: Buy them a round instead of buying the pics. Money better spent.

Bethany: 10-4, brilliant. She said all she heard from the “studio” on the day of sibling pictures was my toddler daughter yelling “NOOO. Nooooo!!!! NOOOOOOO!!!!” while I can only assume her brother was looking on in wonderment at being allowed in the lunch cooler room.

The comical irony of this whole scenario is the vast majority of parents now have smartphones with cameras that rival any professional options AND they have 398 portrait mode pictures of their children in the cloud for every calendar month. Why do we keep signing up for this obsolete tradition?

Kara: You just said it. Tradition.

A collective “Mmmhmmm.”