Picture Day

The student body that arrived yesterday morning was a beautiful vision of pressed shirts, pleated skirts, and polished shoes… there were even a few ties to be seen. Visions are often fleeting and, like a mirage, this one has vanished and there are now few signs that it ever existed.

Picture day is one of many little milestones that we hit throughout the year.  It’s a day when the kids come to school in their best, unless they forgot, and for the most part stay reasonably neat and tidy until the photographs are taken. After the click of the camera all bets are off. Middle schoolers who arrived in skirts or slacks with their hair done and faces bright somehow   depart in jeans and winkled t-shirts. These were presumably stowed in the bilge-water compartment of their backpacks until needed. Hopefully they could change out of their nicer attire quickly enough that their friends would forget that those pieces of clothing ever existed. Hair that was neatly coiffed when the morning began is usually mussed and bedraggled or pulled back into a more utilitarian shape by the time dismissal rolls around. The elementary students typically stay dressed up, but quickly dismiss the possibility that the clothes they were photographed in deserve any better treatment than the clothes they wear everyday. The upshot is that by the time recess is over most of the smaller children have managed to smudge, smear, tear, stretch, and stain their garments and themselves into a state of happy dishevelment.

Picture day also gives rise to a variety of comments from the students and staff. Below are a few I was able to overhear.

“Why did he get a blue background and we got green?”

– 3rd Grader

 

“Woah, his hair is spiked!”

– 4th Grader

 

“My mom always makes me wear a dress, and I hate them.”

– 6th Grader

 

“No one will see that I have shorts on; I always stand in the back of the group picture.”

– 8th Grader

 

“I need a machete and a crossbow for my picture.”

– 8th Grader

 

” Can she borrow your brush it’s a dire emergency!”

– 6th Grader

 

“I need my brush back in like ten seconds!”

– 8th Grader

 

“I hate picture day.”

– Mr. Wilson