A Day That Will Live in Infamy
Tuesday, November 7th, 2006Today is an important day. The results will haunt us for a lifetime – there’s no going back, no changing our decision if we don’t like the outcome. There’s no reviewing and revising our strategy once we commit. It’s today and today alone that matters. So it’s imperative to get this right.Yes, that’s right, it’s School Picture Day. (What? You didn’t expect me to deliver on my lofty principles and write about something unrelated to motherhood?!)Today marks my third year of school pictures. The last two years, with my oldest son, didn’t go well. Too much pressure to perform landed me with choices that included – messed up hair, a blurred photo snapped mid-fit, a blotchy red face, a fake forced smiled and some, I kid you not, actual snarling.
Luckily, I’m a quick study.
This year, my 3 year old daughter started preschool. It’s been lovely. On Tuesday and Thursday mornings she gets dressed without incident, brushes her teeth and even lets me fix her hair. She’s that excited about school.
So I didn’t mention one single word about school pictures today.
Unfortunately, kids have a sixth sense for when something’s amiss. My daughter emerged from her bedroom this morning, still clad in her pink Barbie nightgown, stretching and yawning. She sauntered, rather happily, into my room and crawled up on the bed. She noticed right away that something was strange.
“What’s that thing?” she asked, mid-stretch, nodding toward a unique device, a contraption she’d not seen in her three years of life.
“Oh, this is an iron.” I replied, nonchalantly, “I’m ironing.”
“What does it do?” she asked, her curiosity rising.
“Well, it makes it so your shirt’s not wrinkly,” I said.
“I want my shirt to be wrinkly,” she stated matter-of-factly, employing the contrary, irrational and completely unwavering logic of a three-year-old.
“Oh, silly, you want your shirt to look nice for school,” I offered quickly and with as much total indifference as I could muster.
She looked at me with narrowed, dark brown eyes, sizing the situation up, determining how to proceed. I might have been able to change the subject to breakfast, or turned on PBS Kids for a distraction. We might have made it through unscathed, but her big brother was listening, as usual, from the bathroom. He chose that moment to join the conversation. He burst into the room, eager to convey his advanced knowledge, “Yeah, you have to look nice today – it’s SCHOOL PICTURE DAY,” he reported.
There was a quiet pause. It was the slow motion calm you get right before the storm. You know – the eery quiet that exists in that moment during which the child can’t make any noises because her body is sucking enough air into her lungs to successfully transform her into what we call “supersonic” mode. Then the quiet ended and some words came out.
My dogs might be more equipped to decipher what the words were, as the pitch was such that my human ears could only grasp a wailing of something like “Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooopicurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre
taaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaken.”
I’ll spare the details that followed. There was arguing, bargaining, begging, pleading, wrestling and wrangling. We finally arrived at school, late, blotchy-faced with messy hair and a pretty big shoulder chip. But, amazingly enough, I think the pictures turned out okay.
With pictures behind us and preschool underway – I took the boys and headed to the polls because today really is an important day.
