Wednesday, October 25, 2017

A Twelfth Open Letter to Lifetouch School Portraits

Dear Lifetouch School Portraits,

I have lost the ability to be surprised by how many letters I need to write you folks. Your capacity to suck at your jobs apparently has no limit.

I just felt like you might want an update on the saga of Rat Boy - my fourth-grader whom you took a photo of a few weeks back. As you can tell from the proof sheet you sent us, your photographer managed to capture Son Number Three inexplicably doing his best impression of a hungry rodent on the trail of a delicious odor wafting through the air.

Thanks, again, for that. I thought it was hilarious, but his mom is still holding out hope that you might take a decent picture of him some day, so here we are.

I assume you are aware that today is the day you scheduled for picture retakes. And, once again, you didn’t disappoint in the we-picked-the-worst-possible-day-for-this category. You have managed to schedule your picture days so poorly for so many years I have developed a new theory. I used to think you didn’t have access to our school events schedule, or you had it but didn’t care.

But this same scheduling debacle has occurred so consistently that now I see the truth. You must have our schedule, and you must be reading it very carefully, choosing the most conflicting days on purpose for some maniacal reason I’m not able to comprehend because I was born with the urge to be good at my job. There’s just no possible way someone could pick random days that conflict with our schedule so many times in a row. You would be making your living at a roulette wheel instead of behind a camera if that were the case.

So, I just want to congratulate you on your choice of days this year. You obviously know that this is Red Ribbon week at our school, where we take a stand against drugs by wearing whacky clothes. (Normally it’s the drug addicts who wear weird clothes, but we’ve flipped the script, as the cool kids say.)

Today, of course, is Pajama Day. This schedule overlap has happened multiple times in the past, as you know. It stands to reason, now that I know you’re doing this on purpose. You must be thinking, “All of our pictures are amazing since we’re so damned good at our jobs, so if those ingrate parents didn’t like the picture we took of junior in his Sunday best, I guess they want a portrait of him in his footie Power Ranger jammies.”

That makes perfect sense.

Besides being Pajama Day for the rest of the school, I’m not sure if the fourth grade event scheduled today was on the calendar you received. Just in case it wasn’t, I’ll give you a heads-up.

Each year, our fourth-grade classes learn all about the Gold Rush, culminating in a three-day, two-night field trip to Coloma, CA - the very spot where the first obnoxiously-large nugget of gold was discovered by James Marshall, who then immediately bought the first obnoxiously-yellow Lamborghini.  

A big part of the gold rush experience is getting all dressed up in their 1849 clothes for the trip.

They leave today on the bus.

Thankfully, they are able to get their retake pictures done before they load up. So, the boy you captured the first time looking like a hungry rat will now be re-shot dressed as Clem the intrepid Missourian prospector.

The hat and bandana he’s wearing should play nicely with the theme, but what will really seal the deal is if his teacher can find some black stickum or some electrical tape for his dental work.

If she can’t find what we need, can you guys do me a favor and just digitally edit out most of his teeth? That will complete the look perfectly. I’d really appreciate it.

Thanks a million!

-Smidge


Copyright © 2017 Marc Schmatjen


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