I hate 2020

 (Disclaimer…when I am tired…by humor is sometimes dark, and often a bit dramatic.  This is not a cry for help. I really am laughing)

Time for this week's "Friday Rant!’

Since I have neither the time, nor the inclination, to pour out my traumas to a trained professional, anyone who friended me on Facebook is going the have to be burdened with this one...I apologized beforehand...but seriously 2020...REALLY?

Where to start?

I hate having my picture taken...I wasn't always this way, literally, at one time, it was no problem for someone to snap a quick photo of me looking like I just wandered out of an opium den in Haight-Ashbury

…and once, since my parents really do seem to have had really good fashion sense…and following the lead of my Dad, who never seemed to dislike the camera, I even seemed to enjoy it.

...and then it happened...baby teeth fell out, which I survived without too much trauma. My adult teeth grew in, which I don’t remember being terribly fazed by. I headed off to school where the school photographer took what I thought was going to be just another school picture, and which I stopped thinking about the moment I returned to class.

Then the pictures came back, and I got that first look at what I was sure was going to be my best school picture ever…but that was when the trauma hit me.

I know now that I was experiencing something akin to that moment in the Austin Powers movie when Mike Myers taught us about “Moley Moley Mole!”…except it was more like “WHAT HAPPENED TO MY TEETH?”

Looking back, from 2020, it wasn’t really as bad as I remembered it at the time, but when I was 8, it was pretty horrifying for 8-year-old me…and I do remember, at the time, not intentionally smiling for a very, very long time.

 

That was when I started mostly avoiding all cameras…except for that yearly torture of school pictures as a teacher. (can I take a moment to ask what kind of person decides to enter a career where they have to face their greatest fear on a yearly basis? Seriously…am I masochist?)

…but I digress…

Skip to 2020…

Picture day arrives…which I completely forgot, btw, until arriving at school at 6:30 in the morning…which only caused a moment of trepidation until I had the most wonderful moment of epiphany…and I quote the voice in my head “It is 2020…YOU CAN WEAR A MASK! THIS IS GOING TO BE AWESOME…EVEN BETTER…YOU HAVE YOUR BASEBALL MASK! THIS IS GOING TO BE EPIC!” 

I was experiencing genuine joy.

I entered that room with the same enthusiasm I did in 3rd grade. Hair was on point, shirts were not great, but perfectly workable since I HAD A BASEBALL MASK, AND SINCE IT WAS 2020, I COULD GET AWAY WITH WEARING IT…AND NOBODY WOULD BE ABLE TO TELL ME THAT I SHOULD SMILE, BECAUSE I WOULD BE ABLE TO SAY, without irony, THAT I WAS SMILING!!!!”

…which, btw…I was. 

Life was good.

…and then it happened… after lunch. I was walking back to my classroom after checking for mail in the office, when I accidentally brushed the collar of my shirt…the voice in my head had returned…the voice was now screaming “WHY IS MY COLLAR UP…I DON’T WEAR MY COLLAR UP…I DON’T THINK I EVEN WORE MY COLLAR UP IN 1984 WHEN IT WAS CONSIDERED STYLISH…I HAVE MADE FUN OF PEOPLE WHO WEAR THEIR COLLARS UP!”

“THIS CANNOT BE HAPPENING!!!!”

I tried to console myself with the thought that my collar had to have been flipped up AFTER I had taken what I was sure was going to be the best school picture since 2nd grade.

I was sure that my colleagues, or my students (I teach middle schoolers and high school girls…which, if you don’t know, are two groups of people who notice everything…and normally have no problem pointing out oddities if they are occurring), or the photographer, would have pointed out something like my collar standing up. Surely they would have told me if I was doing something so incredibly dorky.

I WAS WRONG!

Today the pictures arrived…

I haven’t stopped laughing since.

Apparently, if you are a person who normally is pretty careful about choosing the clothes you wear, people just assume that a collar standing up is a fashion statement…and not a genuine faux pas.

I am blaming 2020…from this point forward, I am blaming 2020 for everything.

Happy Friday, Everyone.