I would love to know what's up with me and official photos. Looking at me, you'd think I'm perhaps capable of a good photo. I haven't any evident deformities, I've shiny hair, straight teeth that betray nothing of my British heritage... But for some damn reason, if there's a photo that's going to be used in some sort of official capacity? Oh, man. Doom.
My childhood photos are just going to have to be called an even draw, mostly because I was actually kind of cute, if androgynously so. They're called "page boy" haircuts for a reason, Mom. Then... uh, well, there was an overbite. A pronounced overbite. A serious, serious overbite. And you may all be thinking "braces" at this point, but I will one-up you with this: Headgear.
I don't want to talk about it.
Aaanyhow. The braces coincided rather frightfully with the early 90s, which means that there is a photo out there of me "accessorising" in 5th grade: I chose the pink-and-blue laser backdrop for my school photo, then wore a matching sweater, AND alternating blue-and-pink elastics on my braces. There may also have been a puffy black satin headband, but I really couldn't say, because to look at the photo in that sort of detail would surely bring on blindness. Thank god the grade school photographer was a head-and-shoulders kind of guy, because I don't think anyone could really handle the pegged-jeans, scrunch-socked monstrosity that clearly lurked out of frame.
I think I might have actually looked pretty cute in my mid-teens, but by that time the awfulness of prior photos had finally sunk in, and I avoided camera lenses as though they'd steal my soul. So as much as I claim I looked good, there's no real proof. Also, this hiding technique may have angered the photographic gods, because I've not been able to get a sensible official photo out of them since.
Age 16, driver's license: I believe the glasses I'm wearing occupy about 50% of my face. I do not know why no one told me this at the time.
Age 18, US passport: Drunk foreign exchange student
Age 18, UK passport: Stoooooned foreign exchange student
Age 20, ACIS card: Oh, okay, I forgot this one - Olive had just given me a haircut that made me look like Cleopatra, and I looked damn hot. I knew it at the time, too, as evidenced by the fact that I peeled this photo OFF of the expired ACIS card and proceeded to submit it the next year as a Tube pass photo. No joke.
Age 22, replacement passport photo: My friend Anna came with me for this photo during a break from work, and oh my god. It's winter, and I'm wearing a scarf and my off-day glasses, and there's something disastrously wrong with my hair and I'm wearing a black turtleneck to boot, and the guy only has black-and-white film to take the photo with. The result is that I look like I have arrived directly from Cold War Russia, KGB division. Anna and I are in the middle of discussing exactly how impossible it will be for me to travel ANYWHERE on that passport photo without being immediately detained and questioned when I get a call that someone's found the original passport, making the entire thing moot. I keep the photo, though. It's just that weird.
Age 24, rail card: We are late for a train down south. Olive and I have run to Paddington, run to the departures board, run to the ticket office, realised I qualify for a discount card, run to the photo booth to take the photo. I look like I've had a lobotomy -- like, I have this blank, blowsy, dazed look. It's a photo that should say "Oh, lord, we're going to miss the train and it's all my fault!". Instead, it says "Mmmm... eh? Hallooo!" In all, this saves me £3 with the rail card, which is about the same cost as the photo itself. Daft.
And then there's getting my license today. I tried today, people. I found the oddly-located RMV behind a train station with moderate difficulty. I filled all the paperwork out in advance, so as to avoid that thing where you fill out a form while resting your forehead in your palm and end up with greasy fringe and a red pressure splotch in the photo. In fact, it was all so smoothly done that I was waved right in and found myself before a deeply bored (and undoubtedly depressed) public servant within a matter of moments. Yeah, I was a bit shocked, too.
"Look in the thing heeyah," said the public servant, motioning towards a spot on the front of his booth. I took a moment to think. I didn't wear the black KGB turtleneck. I put on nice makeup. I wore the shapely black frames. I even wore the earrings that Olive's boyfriend gave me for Christmas. All should be well, right? Well, maybe one quick prayer to the soul-stealing photo gods would be goo... "Arright, yah done." What?! There wasn't even a flash!!!
Obviously, I end up looking like some sort of assassin-librarian. It's the sort of photo that makes me realise why old cockney geezers would sidle up to me in London and jolly "Cheer up, luv! It might not happen!" Looking at my new license, I wouldn't blame you for thinking that I spend my days quietly stacking books in the local library and shushing people, only to be occasionally interrupted by ninjas, at which point I flip open the P volume of the enyclopedia to reveal a razor blade embedded in the spine and go to town. It's just that sort of photo.
And so, despite my hopes, 2006 is apparently not the year that I finally take a good photo. If I could remember where I took the Cleopatra photo, I might be superstitious enough to go back, see if there's some sort of magic to it. Alas, that's a mystery as well. Or it could be that I need another haircut from Olive, except that could be unwise at this point, due to an unfortunate incident involving me, her, her freshman year, and the anguished words "too short!". But let's not dwell.
Let's cross our fingers for the passport renewal of 2008, shall we? Bah.
2 comments:
Ah, yes, those wonderful photos. Here in Arizona our license is good for some ridiculous period of time like 20 years or so. The last time I renewed mine, I'd gotten up early to get it done before going to the office. I'd had my coffee and done the do and makeup but, like you, came face to face with the BORED AS HELL AT 7:30 A.M. PUBLIC SERVANT. She told me to "stand over there" and while I waited for further instructions and she appeared to be doing something else, became the victim of a mugshot. I couldn't believe it! Not even the courtesy of a "1, 2, 3!" Oh well, perhaps we're being taken down a notch by the One Who Sees All and Knows All just so we don't get too full of ourselves :-(
How bad is it that I read "The One Who Sees All and Knows All" and immediately thought "Voldemort?" (Who, I am reasonably certain, wears "Angel".) Lydia, I'm just glad that I've left the country for a while and therefore have very little reason to use that photo as an ID!
Dave, I'm so sorry I've taken so long to read this, I'm sure that your brace problems have sorted at this point! But I'll do a run-down on your questions anyhow, just in case someone else stumbles across this:
1) Absolutely impossible to say, unfortunately I think it has to do with pain threshold more than anything, and adult teeth are probably more settled than preteen ones. But watch out for the days when your braces get tightened by the ortho -- that can be just as unpleasant as the first go-round.
2) If a bracket comes off and you're an adult, go and have it glued back on ASAP. If you're a child or teenager, play with it for a while, figuring out how far along the wire you can slide it, or how much effort it takes to flip it around to the outside of the wire completely. Stop when your mother realises that you are breaking thousands of dollars worth of dentistry, and sulk in the car all the way to the orthodontist's office.
3) Metal, baby. They didn't have clear in my days, or if they did, I certainly didn't know it. And I think I had them for over two years, maybe? I do know that when they were taken off, it made a lot of cracking noise to break the glue seal, and that it felt like I had no teeth for a few days afterwards.
4) Rubber bands were AWESOME. They came in neon or in beige, and you just had to be really careful about making sure that when you adjusted them in public, you kept in mind the possible trajectory of any given elastic and hopefully kept that trajectory inside your mouth. Far worse to accidentally blind someone with your drooly elastic than to splutter and swallow a band you've just zinged into the back of your own throat. And I do have to admit that much of the awesomeness of the bands for me was that they are the perfect size to loop over the end of your pinkie nail and shoot at people, because they essentially disappear after your target's been zinged. (For obvious reasons, beige is better for this than neon -- I always took a couple packs of both, so as to be covered both in fashion and in covert warfare.)
Again, so sorry for the AWOLness, and hope that the torment has settled down somewhat!
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