Yesterday was Picture Day at Friendship Montessori School. Picture Day is, as it sounds, a day when pictures are taken. You might argue, rightfully, that every day is picture day for our kids, but yesterday was different in that a green screen was involved, and seasoned professional with a Mickey Mouse doll was charged with entertaining my children while capturing their likenesss.
Picture day began like any other with a thorough scrubbing of the various children who live in this house. Followed by the ritual of dressing.
And eating.
In honor of the day and the nicer-than-usual outfits, we opted for makeshift bibs.
And meal-insertion specialists.
You know, to keep the oatmeal off your pretty pink shirt.
The bibs were not popular with all assembled.
But all that unpleasantness was forgotten by the time we got to school. Picture Day is an exciting time.
It’s not often that the school is transformed into a studio.
It’s not every day that one is asked to sit with one’s siblings on a soft leather cube while a friendly man tells jokes and speaks in funny voices while arranging you just so.
Just so.
And just so.
An astonishing array of pictures were taken, capturing an astonishing array of poses, configurations, and expressions.
I will soon be confronted with that horrible problem that lies at the heart of picture day: order copies of each and every precious moment thus captured or else lose them forever in the great dark vault of time.
There may be no more valuable market than a parent’s love for his children. Fie upon you, imaginers of picture day. I have thousands of photos of my children. Perhaps tens of thousands. And yet, when yours show up, rows and rows of my kids’ smiling faces magically juxtaposed against a cheerful wintry scene, my heart will melt, my resolve will be eviscerated, and my bank account will empty in a moment of love-fueled weakness.
Ah, Picture Day, you slayer of men, you emblem of all that is best and worst about us.
