Adventures in Photography

One of the drawbacks of being Catholic, along with the gnawing guilt, is that most parishes decide to periodically publish a photo directory with pictures of their members. In theory it's supposed to "help you get to know one another!", but in reality is used mostly to bring shame upon your family and allow for rude comments about other people's clothing choices.

Oh. Wait. Is that just me?

Anyhoodles, our church is doing one this summer, ostensibly to allow the new priests to "get to know us!" (Yeah. I'm sure they're sitting in the rectory making flashcards and quizzing themselves.), but again, mostly just there to piss me off.

We did one like five years ago, and...well...it wasn't pretty. Not only had I not discovered the joy that is a flatiron and thus Diana Ross probably could have looked at my hair and wondered what product I used to get such great body and volume!, but we were all pissy and annoying and kind of at each other's throats by the end.

The guy who was helping us pick? Started to swear. (That story killed at cocktail parties for years, btw.)

Not our finest moment. And the picture that we ultimately settled on? Well, it was so bad I almost had to change religions.

Needless to say, I wasn't holding out a lot of hope for tonight. I figured that if we could get away without embarrassing ourselves, it would be a successful evening. But lo! There was kind of a rocky start when the guy told me to straddle something and I don't care if it makes me immature, you cannot expect me to react appropriately to that, and the awkward when I had to kind of sit around John and then he was all, "Oh, do you want copies for the parents!?!?" and Mom was all, "My dad just died." and the guy was all, "Um...oh...I'm sorry for your loss..."

Other than that, it went fine. The picture was actually not terrible, I looked not hideous, and you totally can't tell that I was straddling my little brother.

And nobody screamed or swore or cried. So we're getting better!