I grew up in a small farming community. Financially, my family was on a tight budget. Having family portraits taken was a special occasion that usually required us to travel about an hour into the city. So, when a traveling photographer put up a small portable in the parking lot of our old mom and pops grocery store, it was an exciting ordeal.
My mom was so pumped. She envisioned these beautiful, quality portraits of our family adorning our walls. She could hand them out to family and friends and put them up on her locker at work. She was thrilled and quickly made us an appointment. My brother and I, unfortunately were going through awkward stages. I was a tween with crooked teeth and a funky haircut that my mom cut herself. My brother was also in a stage or orthodontics that left him with two buck teeth in front. My mom was sporting a mullet with feathered bangs and still dressed us all in bright eighties colored clothing.
I’m not sure what she was thinking but she dressed me in a hot pink that day. My brother sported a multicolored polo, my dad wore a simple shirt and she pulled her mullet back into a bun and feathered her bangs. She wore bright pink plastic earrings and matching lipstick.
We show up for our appointment in difference stages of awkwardness. We walk into a dusty, heat-sweltering old portable and sit down in uncomfortable chairs. There is a woman sitting next to my Dad with a large filthy dog. She is as excited as my mom is for cheap photos. She starts brushing out the dirty hair of her dog, the dust and dander goes flying through the air and lands on my dad’s clean shirt. He gives my mom a look I will never forgot. He is so disgusted and uncomfortable, I actually hope he might walk out and spare us from this whole ordeal.
We finally go in to have our picture taken in front of an old makeshift backdrop with a bizarre photographer. We leave and my Dad smartly says nothing. We get the pictures back a few weeks later and oh my, were they awful! My brother has a smile equivalent to Bugs Bunny, my mom looks as if she drank too much coffee, my bangs are crooked because like I stated before, my mom cut them herself and my hot pink shirt makes me stick out like a sore thumb. My Dad looks good though, he pulled off a fake smile quite well! My mom takes one look at them and doesn’t say a thing. She quietly hides them away and I never see them again. Needless to say, they never graced our walls.
A few years ago there was a talk show that was doing an awkward family photo contest. I decided to submit our family’s photo. I went home, pulled out the big box of photographs and sifted through everything. I searched for hours and I couldn’t find them. They had completely disappeared. I asked my mom about them and behold, she had thrown them out. She was so embarrassed by them. She wanted to wipe that memory out of existence. I was so thoroughly disappointed and I never was able to enter the contest.
My parents came to visit last week and they had a gift for me. In a frame, was an 8 by 10 picture of our awkward family photo. They had found a surviving copy that had been given to my grandmother. The only copy in existence. I can’t describe to you just how excited I was!
However, the photo is not as awkward as I remember. It was definitely a testament to the eighties but it really just showed us all in our different stages of growth. My Dad looks handsome (He still had some hair on his now bald head) and my mom looks as pretty as she has always been. My brother and I are captured clearly in our tween stages. There really was nothing that strange about it but the memories…I think it was the memories that made the photo so awkward. I have plans for that photo…it’s going to grace my walls and whenever I look at it I’m going to smile!
Never throw any of your portraits out, no matter how terrible or awkward they look. There just might come a day when instead of mortification you may want to embrace the hilariousness of a terrible picture. Pictures are a powerful way of remembering the past. Life is too short to not have a good laugh.
