An Eighteenth Open Letter to Lifetouch School Portraits

Dear Lifetouch School Portraits,

You guys over there continue to crack me up. You sent me a survey the other day, asking about my most recent Lifetouch experience, and you referred to me as “a valued customer.”

Really? Have you not read any of the letters I’ve sent you over the years? If I’m considered a valued customer, your business is circling the drain a lot faster than I thought it was.

Your survey email read as follows:

As a valued customer, we would love to get your feedback about your most recent school photography experience with Lifetouch.

If you already completed a survey, we thank you! If you have not, and have a moment, please take this brief survey and register for a chance to win a $100 gift card.

Thank you for providing your feedback.

 

My immediate reaction, besides, of course, uncontrollable laughter, was “Wow, a $100 gift card? Why don’t you just offer a free 5x7 image with my next order. That’s an equivalent prize based on your pricing, and seems like it would be less paperwork on your end.”

My most recent school photography experience with Lifetouch consisted of the following: I was driving Son Number Three to his sophomore check-in day a few weeks ago, and halfway to the high school I remembered that you would have employees taking pictures that day. (I still cannot, in good conscience, refer to them as “photographers.”)

I said, “Oh, yeah, by the way, school pictures are today, too.”

He was in a semi-presentable T-shirt, but his hair was a little on the “I don’t really care about my hair today” side.

He said, “Great. Thanks for the heads up.”

Then both of us continued to not care that school pictures were happening that day. I only assume you took his picture. That’s how my most recent school photography experience with Lifetouch went.

I may not care about picture day anymore because of you, but since I do care so much about helping you improve your business model, I figured I would click on the survey link and help you out. At a minimum, I was going to hunt around for the button labeled “See any one of my previous seventeen letters.”

I couldn’t find that button. I couldn’t even find the survey. You see, Lifetouch, this is why you are so loveable, and at the same time, such an absolute bane of so many parents’ existence.

I mean, we’ve all been aware for many years now that you refuse to hire actual photographers for your photography business. But apparently, you use that same unorthodox rebellious model in every aspect of your organization, including your web team.

I clicked on the link, told you that my child was in 10^th grade, hit the “next” button, and was greeted with this:  

This feedback.inmoment.com page can’t be found

No webpage was found for the web address: https://feedback.inmoment.com/websurvey/2/undefined HTTP ERROR 404

 

You’re a school picture company that can’t figure out how to take school pictures, so I don’t know why I expected you to be able to take survey answers either.

Stay adorable!

Yours always,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2023 Marc Schmatjen

 

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A Seventeenth Open Letter to Lifetouch School Portraits

Dear Lifetouch School Portraits,

I really have to give you some credit.

“For our photography skills?” you ask, hopefully?

Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous. You’re horrible at the photography part of your photography business.

No, I have to give credit to your branding team for their self-awareness. (I’d like to think my previous sixteen letters may have guided them a bit, but there is still no actual evidence that you have read any of them.)

Son Number One just started his senior year of high school, and senior portraits for the yearbook are required to be completed by September. Your branding department obviously knew “Lifetouch” would never be able to secure the coveted senior portraits contract. You’ve done too much damage over the years.

There’s a three-mile-wide path of food-on-face, jacked-up shirt collar, torqued hair, forced smile destruction in your wake. The damage you have inflicted on the refrigerator doors of innocent parents and grandparents over the years is incalculable.

But you couldn’t just let another company – perhaps even a photography company that hires actual photographers – swoop in and steal all that business. So what did you do? You gave them a fake name, just like my wife did to me the first time I met her. Genius!

I’m sure after minutes of thought, you landed on “Prestige Photography.” Sounds legit. Sounds classy. You were probably even fairly sure ‘prestige’ was a real word, even if none of you knew what it meant.

Since you don’t hire actual photographers, you were able to severely lowball the competition and you landed the contract. Congratulations! Smart business move.

Unfortunately, however, you can only put so much lipstick on a pig, as it were. Your Prestige website to set up my appointment was just as wonky as its Lifetouch cousin, and I especially enjoyed the appointment reminder emails I received once a day literally every day for the seven days prior to the session, yet not one the morning of the actual day. Go figure.

As I have shared with you numerous times in the past, Son Number One was tragically born with CFSD (Chronic Forced Smile Disorder). His natural impulse in front of a camera is to make a face like he just caught his pinky toe on the bed frame. Because of that fact, my wife made me go with him for his senior portrait session, as comic relief, in hopes of getting a genuine smile for at least one of the pictures. “Prestige Photography” was cleverly disguised as a real studio, complete with multiple sets sporting various backgrounds that high school kids love, like gaudy Victorian living room, and yellow swirly wall.

It looked so professional in fact, that I was almost lulled into a false sense of security. That was until the costume lady put him in a tuxedo jacket that was roughly six or seven sizes too small and said, “Great.” It honestly looked like she might have been going for a “look how much I’ve grown since the fifth grade” thing.

I got the jacket issue fixed only to discover the tuxedo shirt was a complete fake. It was just the front of the shirt with fake buttons, held in place by a Velcro collar. Typical. And don’t even get me started on the graduation “gown.” It only went down to his waist!

I lost my focus again after the pictures had started, mainly due to a vexing Wordle situation, but I was snapped back to reality when I heard a concerning statement from the lady holding the camera. (I cannot in good conscience refer to your employees as “photographers”). She said, “I love these smiles.” I was off to the side without a very clear view, but I immediately knew his CFSD was flaring up. I have enough experience with your company to know what you consider to be a great smile.

I think I cracked off enough one-liners and stupid comments to get a real smile out of him. The only problem was my jokes were really landing with the lady holding the camera. She was laughing the whole time, so I’ve got my fingers crossed she managed to hold the camera steady.

Probably not, though. I have no way to tell, since you haven’t yet taken the very simple and obvious step of projecting the pictures to a monitor somewhere in the room so that parents can approve them on the go.

I mean, I know that kind of logical idea is well out of reach for Lifetouch, but I expected just a little more from a company called “Prestige.”

Can’t wait to see the proofs!

Yours always,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2022 Marc Schmatjen

 

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A Sixteenth Open Letter to Lifetouch School Portraits

Dear Lifetouch School Portraits,

School is only a month away from being over, and we never saw you on campus this year. I think it’s been a year and a half since we’ve seen each other! Surely you have finally had time to read my previous fifteen informative letters to you about your ridiculous business model and your general lack of photography skills. You desperately need to do so, because despite all my efforts to help you, on our last meeting, you actually said to the girl in front of Son Number Three, and I quote, “Oh, c’mon, give me a real smile.”

So as of early 2020 anyway, your hiring practices were still the same as they’ve always been:

Lifetouch: Are you currently breathing?

Unemployed person: Yes.

Lifetouch: Will you pass a background check?

UP: Yes.

Lifetouch: You’re hired.

UP: Umm… you guys heard me when I said I have no photography experience or experience with kids whatsoever, right. I actually thought this was a McDonald’s interview.

Lifetouch: Yep, you’re a perfect fit!

You’ve had a lot of free time and now that you’re owned by Shutterfly, surely you all have seen some of the pictures other people take to put in photobooks, on coffee mugs for grandma, mousepads, etc. You have to realize by now that it’s possible to take good pictures of children actually smiling. So, I assume you’ve spent the last eighteen months studying up on photography techniques, how to get children to genuinely smile, and what all the buttons do on your cameras, right?

No? Didn’t think so.

Here’s the crazy part, and the reason for my letter today. People with a phone that doubles as a camera (or the other way around, really) are able to take fantastic pictures of their smiling selves by just holding the device at arm’s length.

Do you realize what that means for you, the “professional photographers?” If people with a phone can take a better picture of themselves than you can of them, which you have proven time and time again to be the case, then that automatically invalidates the “professional” in your name.

It’s like going to a restaurant and paying $37 for a piece of burnt toast and the only jelly available is marmalade. We can make fantastic toast at our own homes for basically free, and we have a wide array of jam, jelly, and preserve options in our own refrigerators.

What I’m saying is, as far as photography goes, you make overpriced, crappy toast.

So here’s my new idea for you: Eliminate your photographer problem with the new Lifetouch Selfie App. On school picture day, kids will grab their cell phones and take selfies, then upload the one they want to your app. The school photos would then magically show up at their houses, printed on the fun glossy paper you guys have with the cool swirly blue school picture background automatically added in.

Photographer and COVID problems solved all in one little app. You’re welcome. I can’t wait to see what you come up with. Although, based on your previous track record, you will probably try to charge $39.99 for the app, it will freeze up and fail on Android devices, and only print pictures in sepia, but I’ve got my fingers crossed for you!

I will leave it with you and your app developers to handle the details, but I’m thinking your tagline could be, “Reach out and Lifetouch yourself!”

Or, maybe not.

Best of luck,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2021 Marc Schmatjen

 

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National Crappy School Picture Day

It’s almost here!! Tomorrow, September 10^th, is the fake national “day” that Lifetouch School Portraits is trying to start! It’s National School Picture Day tomorrow!!

As you can see by the excessive exclamation points, I can hardly contain my excitement.

If you have ever had a child in school, or been given a child’s school picture, you obviously already know that Lifetouch is not good at taking pictures. They built a business around going to schools and then selling parents pictures of their kids, but forgot the all-important step of finding photographers willing and able to take actually good pictures.

Now they are asking us to post our favorite old school pictures to the internet tomorrow with the tags #Lifetouch and #NationalSchoolPictureDay, in a desperate attempt to stay relevant since they can’t be on campus taking pictures of your child with food stuck to their face.

I know, I know. All you parents and grandparents out there are still sad about the fact that you won’t get school pictures this year. You always hope for the rare good ones, but there isn’t even the possibility of getting the inevitable crappy Lifetouch pictures of your little darlings this year. Never fear. We now have a solution that will get you both!

Step One: Dress your child in picture day clothes and put them in front of a finger-painted swirly gray or blue background. Get your cell phone ready and say “poopy butt.” Elementary schoolers will laugh immediately. You may need to say it two or three times for high schoolers, but they all laugh eventually. Snap a few photos while they are laughing and boom, you have an actually good school picture for the year.

Step Two: Post your old crappy Lifetouch school pictures on Facebook.

The best of both worlds!

Now remember, when you post those bad pictures, I don’t want you to use Lifetouch’s suggested tags. The people at Lifetouch do not possess the ability to tell a good picture from a bad one. The humor will be lost on them and they will only be encouraged.

I do, however, really want you to post your bad Lifetouch school pictures to MY Facebook page (Marc Schmatjen), so we can all get a kick out of just how much they suck at taking school pictures. If you want to give them tags, you can use #CrappyLifetouch and #NationalCrappySchoolPictureDay.

You can find me at facebook.com/schmatjen

We can start today. We don’t need to wait until September 10^th.

Let the crappiness begin!

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2020 Marc Schmatjen

 

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A Third Open Letter to the School District

Dear folks in charge of the decision making down at the School District,

I am writing to urge you to reopen our schools as soon as possible. I mean like tomorrow. We need to avert a monumental tragedy, and opening schools across the nation is the only way to be sure we can avoid it.

Schools need to reopen now in order to save Lifetouch School Portraits from certain doom. I fear they will go out of business otherwise.

We need Lifetouch in our lives! Obviously not for good quality school pictures. They are incapable of that. We need them for the joy they spread through the sheer absurdity of the images of our children that they attempt to pass off as good quality school pictures.

Without the fall and spring comic relief that Lifetouch offers us as parents, raising our children would simply be overwhelming.

This matter is extremely urgent, as Lifetouch is already showing signs of desperation. They are clawing at the walls of their school-less prison, and they need our help. They have already gone as far as attempting to create a new “national day.”

Emails have been blasted to anyone who has ever had even the remotest contact with their little photography hobby shop, announcing the creation of “National School Picture Day” on September 10^th.

In addition to some “nominate a great teacher” thing, they are asking us to upload our previous school pictures that they took, so we can all create a national yearbook.

National School Picture Day, established by Lifetouch, is an opportunity to relive our school pictures. It’s a chance to bond over the fads and faces that make school pictures such wonderful artifacts. And, this year, we’re creating the ultimate yearbook.

As an example of how ludicrous they are as a company, and why this type of comedy is so valuable to the mental health and stability of us parents, one must look no further than this email, keeping in mind they sent it to us on purpose.

The email contains three examples of the amazing school portraits they have captured over the years. One shows a boy in giant reading glasses, with awful lighting resulting in his glasses casting shadows on his face, and his head casting a shadow on the time-honored swirly gray school picture background behind him. We can see that he is, at least, smiling, even though his chin is being partially obscured by his enormous shirt collar, which is also casting a shadow.

Another is a photo of a little girl not even looking at the camera. Instead, she is closing her eyes and turning her head. This unfortunate situation is offset, however, by more bad lighting, as per standard.

Think about this. These are the pictures that Lifetouch is purposely showing us in an attempt to keep their business relevant!

“Hey America, check out these crappy pictures we took and charged these families money for! Please engage with us online so we can stay alive and continue to be your go-to crappy school photography company for years to come.”

I mean, that is just gold, people. That is the kind of comic relief that you can’t put a price on. Humor like that can pull you out of even the darkest parenting funk. We need Lifetouch to stay in business, even if the business they are in is entirely undefinable.

We need schools back open so there will be long lines of kids with food stuck to their faces to shuffle into the seats in front of the inadequate and poorly placed lights.

Open up our schools and help keep this national treasure alive and well. It’s not a question of whether we want school pictures. We need our school pictures!!

We need the good ones we take ourselves and send to relatives, and we need the ridiculous ones from Lifetouch to keep us all going as a people, united in humor.

Open schools tomorrow, save Lifetouch, and save our nation.

Yours in educational excellence through continued partnership,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2020 Marc Schmatjen

 

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A Fifteenth Open Letter to Lifetouch School Portraits

Dear Lifetouch School Portraits,

I know that since you can’t visit schools this spring, you are all probably working from home and finally reading the fourteen previous letters I’ve graciously sent you over the years to help you improve your business model. (Cliff Notes on my last letter, in case you’re super-busy like me: Hiring photographers from the DMV or the passport office would be a great start.)

I’m writing again today not to offer you more amazing and free advice on how to improve your little photography hobby shop over there, but simply to let you know that I’m sad.

I am sad that we can’t be together this spring. I know you feel the same way, because you send me weekly emails expressing the same sentiment. You reassure me that you are here for me in these troubled and unprecedented times.

You remind me that you “love being a place where you can capture memories, stay connected to your loved ones, and build community,” and that “in the midst of COVID-19, and school closings, we will continue to be that place where you can share & connect.”

I mean, I don’t miss you that way. Sure, you have certainly captured some memories for me over the years, but they were mostly memories of how bad you are with hair, shirt collars, food stuck to faces, getting kids to smile, and just general photography of humans.

As far as helping people stay connected to loved ones and build community, I have no idea how you ever did that or plan on ever doing that, but cool.

No, the reason I miss you is because it’s spring, and spring has always been the time when you took pictures of my kids that I never authorized, never asked for in any way, and never wanted at all.

Despite all that, you diligently took spring photos of my boys in their best stained T-shirts and soccer shorts, and promptly printed and sent me reams and reams of pictures that I still hadn’t authorized, ordered, asked for, or wanted in any way.

This spring is special, and the fact that we won’t be together this year is breaking my heart. You see, we’ve been quarantined, and the boys haven’t had haircuts in three months. This year’s spring pictures could have been epic.

I could have bought a “vote for Pedro” shirt for Son Number Two, given him bigger glasses, and convinced him to stare into the camera with an idiotic mouth-breather expression. Uncanny.

We could have put zinc oxide all over Son Number Three’s nose and sent him to school in an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt. He has loads of blond hair and he already has a natural dazed look of utter confusion, so it would have been awesome.

Son Number One’s hair has gotten the craziest, so we naturally would have had to go all out with him. His hair is dark and turns out to be curly when grown out, so he has developed a pretty decent afro for a white kid. Money would have been no object.

I would have bought him a yellow number ten soccer jersey and invested in some quality glue-on mustache options to be sure we got the look just right. A trip to the salon to get those frosted blonde highlights just right and maybe perm out those ring curls a little and he would have been amazing.

You surely understand now why I am so distraught. By doing nothing other than paying attention to when picture day was and making sure they were dressed appropriately, you would have automatically provided me with glossy copy after copy of a perfect not-exactly-red-headed Napoleon Dynamite, a pint-sized Jeff Spicoli, and a truly glorious young Carlos Valderrama.

I still wouldn’t have paid you for them, but I would have definitely kept them this year!

I actually miss you. Who woulda thought, huh?

See you in the fall,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2020 Marc Schmatjen

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A Fourteenth Open Letter to Lifetouch School Portraits

Dear Lifetouch School Portraits,

You know, fellas, life is funny, isn’t it? I mean, just when I thought there wasn’t any more advice I could give you about how to improve your thriving picture business, life throws me another photography curveball.

I get the feeling you aren’t reading my letters, so just in case that’s true, here’s where we stand:

I think you’re pretty bad at your overall job of managing the school picture process. Central to that, I think you just kinda suck at taking good pictures of kids. There’s really no other way to say it.

Based on the results we’ve seen over the years from our three boys, I’d guess you land somewhere in the fifty percent range. That’s an F on any grading scale. Unless we’re talking about the elementary school grading scale. We don’t do letters or numbers anymore, so your grade would be “Standard Not Met.” Still sucky.

After thirteen letters to you and one to Shutterfly urging them to back out of their ill-advised purchase of your little photography hobby shop over there, I thought I was just plain out of free advice to give you. Thankfully for you, I was wrong.

You see, as we’ve talked about many times in the past, Son Number One has a bad case of CFSD – Chronic Forced Smile Disorder. Unless you can get him to relax and laugh a little, his camera smile looks like he just stepped barefoot on a pile of Legos.

In your last twenty-one tries - twice a year from his preschool postgraduate year at Transitional Kindergarten all the way until this year in ninth grade - I’m not sure you have ever once managed to get a decent picture of him. Son Number Two and Three seem to have slightly better control of their facial muscles, but you still manage to screw them up quite a bit.

Anyhow, Son Number One is taking a trip soon, and we needed to get his passport renewed. The city of Roseville, CA has a passport office, which turned out to be nice because we didn’t have to go to the post office this time. I don’t know why, but the post office just feels as hopeless as the DMV, but without all the fun people watching.

Anyway, we were happy about the City of Roseville office because they not only let us set an appointment, but they offered picture services as well. We were renewing all three boys’ passports, so it was nice not to have to go somewhere else to get the pictures taken.

I would say that you might be able to see where this is going, but I’ve seen your pictures, so I’m not sure you can see much of anything. I’ll spell it out for you.

A lady who works every single day on a stool at a counter behind a glass wall in a drab and dreary city office building, picked up a handheld digital camera, and against the background of a plain white city office building wall, took three pictures of our boys that are better than anything you have ever been able to produce for us.

She actually took one of the best pictures of Son Number One that we have ever seen. His smile is natural and bright. He looks radiant with joy and brimming with youthful exuberance. The best you have ever done with him is “possibly not constipated.”

So, there it is, Lifetouch. That’s how bad you are. Lifetime government employees in hopeless little square offices take pictures that are a thousand times better than your “professional” photographers can muster. I’m not sure what you can do about that.

I don’t think there are enough city passport employees that you could lure away from the counter, even if you could match that sweet government pay scale and pension plan. There’s probably enough DMV driver’s license photographers out there, which would obviously be a huge improvement to your business model, but you have the whole government pension problem there too.

Maybe you guys could just figure out who trains these city, county, and state photographers who take such amazing identification photos, and lure that training staff away to help with your folks.

I’ll leave it up to you to figure out.

We just can’t wait to send photocopies of our boys’ passport pictures out in the Christmas letters this year!

Happy holidays,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2019 Marc Schmatjen

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An Open Letter to Shutterfly, Regarding Lifetouch

Dear Shutterfly,

Last November was the first time I heard your name associated with the venerable, dare I say, tour de force of a company that is Lifetouch School Portraits.

It happened when Lifetouch sent me an email with promo codes to create free Shutterfly photo books.

A few days later, Lifetouch sent another email explaining that “We were a little too excited to deliver your free Shutterfly photo book offer so you may have received a code that doesn’t work.”  I guess they included new promo codes that may or may not have actually worked. I’ll never know, because I never tried them.

I never tried the original promo codes either, because the pictures Lifetouch was offering to put into a free Shutterfly photo book were taken by Lifetouch.

I don’t even have to go back and look at them. I just know.

Son Number One will have a forced, pained smile on his face, like he just stepped barefoot onto a bunch of seashells.

Son Number Two’s hair will be all over the place and his glasses will be visibly smudged and probably on his face crooked. His smile is a fifty-fifty toss-up.

Son Number Three will have some sort of food or condiment prominently displaced somewhere on his face or head, and his “smile” will either look pained, quizzical, confused, nervous, or, like last year’s picture, strangely rodent-ish. It will look like anything other than his actual beautiful, joyous smile.

I’m not sure why I would want any of that in a photo book, free or otherwise.

Lifetouch screwing up the codes didn’t surprise me one bit, because I have a long history with them. I have written them many helpful letters over the years (thirteen to be exact) giving them tons of free advice on how to take passable pictures of children, how to improve their business model, and how to just generally not suck at what they do.

As far as I know, no one at Lifetouch has ever read a single one of my letters. They certainly haven’t taken any of my free advice, like, maybe wiping the macaroni and cheese off the kid’s face before snapping the picture, and stuff like that.

You might not have as much direct personal experience with them, but the fact that they screwed up the free promo code email should have been a major warning sign for you.

But instead of running away as fast as you could, apparently you just went ahead and purchased Lifetouch. And according to Forbes, you paid $825 million for them! You really should have called me first. That was not a good idea.

If you really wanted to get into the school picture business so badly, I honestly believe you could have cornered the market for less than ten or twelve thousand dollars by hiring retired postal employees to take pictures at the schools with their personal cell phones. Seriously.

Anyway, today I received a desperate plea from “Lifetouch + Shutterfly” that my Fall Portraits would soon expire, and I was given helpful portrait ID numbers and access codes for all three boys so I could purchase them and have you preserve them forever.

Sounds like you guys over at Shutterfly are trying to figure out how to get back some of those wisely-spent millions. And how do I know those codes will even work?

Never mind that – back to my original point here, Shutterfly. The pictures you want me to buy were taken by Lifetouch. If I wouldn’t buy the individual paper pictures, why would I buy a hardcover book of them? Or a coffee mug? Or a pillow? Or a wrapped canvas wall hanging?

He has mustard on his face!

I have to look at food on his face almost every time he’s actually in the room. Why would I want to immortalize it on my wall, as well?

He’s smiling like he just backed into an electric fence!

Why would I want to put that on a pillow? Pillows are supposed to make people comfortable!

Have your financial people call me. We should talk.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2019 Marc Schmatjen

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A Thirteenth Open Letter to Lifetouch School Portraits

Dear Lifetouch School Portraits,

Gosh, fellas. Who woulda thought, only a few short years ago as I wrote you my first letter, that we’d need to get all the way up to letter number thirteen? But here we are.

I have felt, for a number of years now, that you might not be reading any of these letters that I so graciously spend my time and energy writing you. That was mostly due to the utter lack of response I have received from you. I see now how wrong I was.

Foolishly, I assumed you would respond to my helpful business advice with a civilized letter, a phone call, or maybe a nice note on your website. But it seems you are the petty, passive-aggressive type. You have chosen to take my sincere and constructive criticisms with a malice that was never present on my end. And you have chosen to take the low road; responding not to me, but instead, viciously attacking my children’s self-esteem.

Well, not all of them, actually. For some reason – probably rooted deep down in your brutal, calculating business core – you have chosen to retaliate on the weakest member of our herd, the youngest – Son Number Three.

Have you no shame? Have you no decency? Or are you going to claim innocence in this matter and try to convince me that you don’t have anyone in the building who can spell common English names?

No, I’m not talking about “Schmatjen.” That’s not common, or English. I mean, I think we can all agree that Schmatjen is a ridiculous last name. I expect it to be misspelled. I can’t even spell it correctly myself half the time.

But given the last name, we purposely gave all three boys traditional, easy-to-spell first names. Not like my parents, who doubled down on the crazy with Marc instead of Mark. We decided to give our children the gift of only needing to explain the spelling of their last name.

And yet, here in my hand is the class picture you produced. And there’s my youngest son, smiling sweetly in his cowboy hat and red bandana. (You may recall from Letters Eleven and Twelve your culpability in that make-up picture day costume extravaganza, which, by the way, may have either ruined our Christmas tradition of framed school portraits for the grandparents, or made it infinitely more awesome, depending on if you ask my wife or me. Guess who won that argument? Thanks again for that, jackasses.)

Anyway, there’s his smiling face… and there’s his “name” under his photo. Yep, there’s our son, Josepm Schmatjen.

Josepm? Seriously?

Congratulations. You got “Schmatjen” right, but couldn’t seem to pull off the easy first name. If this isn’t a backhanded attempt at retribution, then please tell me what’s going on over there.

Did you guys think my son was a nocturnal Hispanic child with a cool nickname?

Who’s coming over tonight?

Jose PM. We’re going out for another late night on the town.

Oh, I thought Joseam was coming over.

Nope, that kid’s always in bed by seven.

Or did you outsource the “Kids’ Names Below the Pictures” department to India, like you probably did with your call center? The reason I ask is his classmate Abhaijeet’s name is spelled correctly. Do you have some underpaid guy in a tiny office in Mumbai still trying to grasp all these crazy American names? “Timothy” is still a mystery, but to him, “Chhailbehari” looks like “John.”

I really don’t know what you have going on over there, but since you never reply, I’m forced to speculate. Given the deterioration in our relationship, I can’t help but think this might have been personal. I sure hope it wasn’t.

Hey, I just had a thought. Maybe I’ll send Son Number Three back for retakes dressed like a lifeguard with white zinc oxide on his nose. With a slight tweak of his already misspelled name I could use your free picture services to launch his career as Joe SPF, sunscreen model.

Let’s talk.

-Smidge

Copyright © 2018 Marc Schmatjen

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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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An Eleventh Open Letter to Lifetouch School Portraits

You know, Lifetouch, I never thought I would need to write eleven separate letters to you, but here we are.

As you know, we broke up with you for fall pictures, so I’m not writing about a problem with my order. There was no order. But after receiving the “you still have time to order” page from you yesterday, emblazoned with Son Number Three’s something-other-than-smiling face on six different fun backgrounds, something needed to be said.

I have tried over the years to help you in many ways. I’ve selflessly shared my time and business knowledge with you. I’ve given you countless nuggets of valuable advice for free, so that you could hopefully begin to see things from a perspective obviously lacking in your organization – that of a human with a brain.

I see now that all my time and effort has been wasted. The 8-1/2 x 11 FujiFilm flyer you just sent me, urging me to purchase beautiful portraits of my youngest son, is glaringly hideous proof that you have not heard a single word I said.

How can I be expected to help you do your job when you don’t even know what it is? You seem to think your job is to sell me pictures of my kids. You are wrong. That is the business you are in. Your job is to take their picture. There’s a difference between the business you’re in and the job you have to do. You can’t survive in any business if you don’t do your job.

I always figured this went without saying, given the business you’re in, but again, here we are. In this country, when people sit down to have their portrait taken, they are expecting to have that portrait actually look like them. It’s their personal choice to smile or not, but inevitably, one hundred percent of them will be expecting to actually see a picture of themselves as the final result.

I imagine by now, you are sensing my issue here, but let me give you some background on Son Number Three just to solidify my point. He is a good-looking kid. And I’m not being an overly proud dad, and I’m not looking at him through rose-colored glasses. Now don’t get me wrong – I think all three of my boys are handsome gents, but Number Three is just flat-out good looking. And so you know I’m not being vain, I’ll tell you he gets it almost exclusively from his mother’s side. He looks just like her father, who looked just like Paul Newman in his younger years.

Our little Paul Newman knockoff has radiant ice-blue eyes and a joyous smile. Neither of those things are apparent in the picture you recently took of him.

Sure, he’s had his past struggles with CFSD (Chronic Forced Smile Disorder), but this issue goes way beyond that. He was one of the CFSD success stories. His last few organized family portraits showed little to no sign of his early issues with the disorder. He has learned to smile for a camera the way he smiles for a joke. You have taken that away from us.

Standing behind the old-timey wooden school chair in the classroom, or the library, or the plain slate gray background, he is squinting like he’s searching for a ship on the sun-glared horizon.

For reasons unknown, his normally room-lighting smile is missing, replaced by what appears to be his facial impression of a rat sniffing for a tasty morsel at the bottom of a Dumpster.

His entire face is squished up, with his lips curled in such a fashion I can envision no other scenario than your photographer asking him to do his best impression of a rodent.

OK, sniff for the delicious garbage. Good! Now curl your lips over your teeth and make the squeaky rat noise. Perfect! Got it. Next.

And a special thanks for the useless free gift at the bottom of this sheet. Your complimentary SmileSafe cards, meant to be an aid to law enforcement in the unthinkable event that my child ever went missing, are completely useless. I would be better off drawing a stick figure of my child and describing his features in Latin to the police than giving them this picture of some random rodent boy. He could be standing next to me when I handed them this picture and they wouldn’t be able to find him.

Tell me I’m wrong, Lifetouch. Give me some explanation, in this age of digital cameras and LCD flat screen TVs, why you couldn’t see how bad this picture was the very second you took it. You have the good-looking happy-go-lucky child right there in front of you. Tell me you could honestly pick him out of a lineup based on the rat picture you just took. I dare you.

The only other remote scenario I can think of that could explain this picture is if you have taken the Americans with Disabilities Act too far and actually started hiring blind photographers.

That would explain this perfectly.

Best of luck,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2017 Marc Schmatjen

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A Tenth Open Letter to Lifetouch School Portraits

Kudos to you, Lifetouch. I had no idea how diversified your great company was until we got our new puppy.

It’s been a while since I’ve written to you, so first off, I want you to know I’m still looking forward to spring pictures. It’s the first day of school here today, and I’m already giddy with anticipation about what we might get from you after winter break. If I send Son Number One in a pirate costume with a Sharpie marker “arggh” speech bubble drawn on his cheek, will you still take his picture? Will you still send me reams and reams of pirate pictures I didn’t order, along with handy plastic rulers and keychain fobs of the young buccaneer?

If I send Son Number Two in a stained wife-beater T-shirt, gold chains, a temporary tattoo of red lips on his neck, and no picture order form in sight, will you still sit him down on that silly fake rock you have that looks like a giant cow turd and snap a picture of the little gang banger in a magical field of daisies?

Time will tell. I hope so!

Also, I just wanted to remind you that we’re breaking up with you for the fall pictures. It’s just been too many years of Chronic Forced Smile Disorder, wild uncombed hair, food on the faces, etc. I don’t feel like you and I need to rehash all the reasons. You know how you are.

The real reason I’m writing you today is to congratulate you. After all these years of bad school pictures and questionable business practices (where you send me huge packets of pictures I never ordered or even authorized and then pretend like my only two options are to pay for them or send them back to you), I had never realized you were good at anything.

I foolishly just assumed that your only business was taking pictures of students with noticeable milk mustaches and one side of their shirt collars sticking up. I never imagined you took good pictures of anyone, or anything. Then, we got a puppy.

Now granted, we’re on day ten of having her in the house, and I’m going on an average of three and a half minutes of sleep per night, but I think my judgement was sound in this case. We took our new puppy dog to the vet on Monday, and there, in the front office, your other line of work was showcased.

You take portraits of pets! Who knew? Well, I guess maybe you guys knew, since you do it. Although, based on some of the decisions I’ve seen you human school portrait folks make, maybe you might not be aware. Go ahead and ask around. If the pet portrait thing is another division, can you please let them know they’re doing a good job?

There were big canvas portraits of dogs and cats, all over the walls in the waiting area. Bigger than life-size, the ten or twelve black and white photographs showcased the animals perfectly.

I’m not sure if they were the fall or spring pictures from obedience school, but they were really great. None of their smiles looked forced. None of their collars had any parts sticking up. Their hair wasn’t messed up, there was no food stuck to any of their faces, and none of them were covered in chalk or paint.

Plus, they were all just head shots of the dogs and cats, so your pet people even figured out how to avoid the embarrassing cow turd chair problem.  

Just an all-around outstanding job by the pet school portrait division. Again, please tell them good job, and while you’re over there, you human school portrait guys might want to ask them for some pointers. Just a thought.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2017 Marc Schmatjen

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A Ninth Open Letter to Lifetouch School Portraits

Dear Lifetouch School Portraits,

Last year at this time I sat down and selflessly took time out of my busy schedule of snacking to write you a sixth open letter. I have given you nothing but invaluable advice over the years, attempting to help you improve not only your business operations, but also your business model, never asking anything in return for all my time and effort.

That changes as of today. One of two things is happening. You are either not reading my letters, or you simply don’t care. Given the current situation, I have to assume it’s the latter. You see, in letter number six I gave you the friendly heads-up that you’d ‘accidentally’ scheduled picture retake day during our school’s spirit week, specifically on pajama day.

I’ve got to hand it to you. Last year when you scheduled picture retake day on pajama day, I gave you the benefit of the doubt. But you did the exact same thing again this year. Retakes are today for a school full of kids wearing fuzzy SpongeBob SquarePants jammies.

Who’s in charge of scheduling this? I’m starting to think it’s the same photographer who didn’t care during the original picture day that Son Number Three had a clown-sized milk mustache and an entire cheese puff stuck to his face. I mean, logically I just have to assume he or she didn’t care, since being legally blind probably prevents employment as a photographer. Or maybe not with you guys.

Honestly, if it was solely up to me, I would have been done with school pictures a long time ago. But my wife, bless her heart, was clinging to the hope that school pictures still meant something special to you. Her answer to me this morning when I asked if she wanted retakes: “Why bother? What if they’re worse?”

You’ve lost my wife, so now your relationship with me has officially changed.

We used to pay you for the fall pictures, but I see that coming to a close. We have a nice camera, and we have something you apparently don’t – napkins. From now on, Costco Film Developing will be our official fall school picture photographer. I’ll save money, and I won’t have to look at food on my sons’ faces. Not in the pictures, anyway. I will obviously continue to see food on their faces during the day, since none of them have yet to master civilized eating. Son Number Three constantly looks like he used a grenade to get the food into his mouth instead of a fork.

As for spring pictures, that’s where our relationship is taking its biggest turn. I used to simply ignore the notices since I didn’t want or need more pictures ten days after you took the last set. Many of my helpful letters to you over the years have highlighted how you could save enormous amounts of money by not inexplicably printing and shipping reams and reams of spring pictures to me that I didn’t want in the first place. The indication that I didn’t want them still being the very easy to understand fact that I didn’t order them.

I know you guys are having a hard time with that concept, so let me try to put it in another context for you. Let’s use fast food as an example. Next time you drive past a McDonald’s, take a minute to notice that no one runs out of the building, chases your car down the street, throws hamburgers into your window, then sends you letters asking you to pay for the delicious burgers or kindly return them to the store.

McDonald’s has the business model where they wait for people to actually order the hamburgers before they make them and hand them over. Crazy, I know, but that’s how they do it.

Since we’re on letter number nine here, I feel like I should go a little further with the explanation. The spring pictures you print and send me that I didn’t order are the hamburgers getting thrown through the moving car’s window three blocks away from the restaurant. Get it?

I used to not care about when spring picture day was. And as humorous as I thought it was that you still took their pictures anyway, despite the distinct lack of any order forms, and then sent them to me hoping I would give you money, I still didn’t care.

Now I care. Now I am going to pay attention to when spring picture day. Now I’m going to get my kids dressed up on that morning and have them ready for pictures.

Spring picture day is our family’s new Halloween. I’m going to test you and see when you will finally stop sending me pictures. Will you still take pictures of my kids if I draw mustaches and surprised eyebrows on all of them with baseball eye black? Will you send me reams and reams of pictures I’m not going to pay for of my sons with Sharpie marker beard stubble and eye patches?

We’re going to find out.

Thank you Lifetouch! I’m really looking forward to our new relationship moving forward. If you don’t care, then I don’t either.

Good luck with your pajama pictures today.

All my best,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2016 Marc Schmatjen

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Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

An Eighth Open Letter to Lifetouch School Portraits

Dear Lifetouch School Portraits,

Just wanted to shoot you another quick letter and let you know that I’m super excited you and I are back together again for Fall Picture Day tomorrow. Getting those picture packets is like opening a box of Cracker Jack every year – I just can’t wait to see what we get.

In my fifth letter to you, I very helpfully detailed how much your website sucks. I assumed you would use that information to improve the website up to at least an IRS.gov level of user-friendliness. I don’t think that’s asking too much.

I wanted to take a minute this year and let you know what a total suckfest your website still is. To focus on the positive for a minute – When ordering my picture packets, there were only six annoying options to click ‘no thanks’ on this year, instead of the forty or fifty I had to wade through last year, so I take that as evidence that you actually have an IT guy. Although, based on everything else, I’m assuming it’s still that fourth-grader. Actually, I guess he or she would be in fifth grade this year. Tell them congratulations for me.

Back to the suckfest - I already had an account with a username and password from years prior, so I logged in and was happy to see my information on the screen, but the momentary hopefulness dissolved quickly as I noticed the system had not saved my sons’ info. Why? Why would you not save that? They’re the ones getting their pictures taken.

On the front page you invited me to ‘add students,’ so I did. It went OK, but I’d like to point out that once I tell you what state and city our oldest boy lives in, and what school he attends, it might be nice if you were to auto-fill that info in for the other two boys instead of having me have to start completely fresh every time. We don’t have one of our elementary school children in California and another in Idaho like I guess you assume most people do? We all live in the same house.

Once I was done with the longer-than-it-needed-to-be process of typing in the exact same information for three kids I was absolutely thrilled to see that when I actually tried to order pictures, I had to type in all that information again. Separately. Three times.

Apparently I was only ‘adding students’ to my new Lifetouch ‘My Rewards’ program that I thought was the start of the order process, but is actually not related to anything helpful about ordering pictures. You did offer me a ‘FREE Hi-Res Digital Image’ through my new My Rewards account that now remembers my boys’ names (but again, I feel I need to point out, does not transfer them through to the actual order process, which would be the only reason anyone would want your website to remember their kids’ names). I didn’t get the news about the amazing free Hi-Res image deal until after my purchase, and there does not seem to be any way to add it to my order now, so thanks for nothing, really. It’s OK, though. We’re really a Lo-Res family anyway. We get too Hi-Res and we might start to notice the mustard stains on their faces and shirts.

I also see that you have completely done away with that annoying family plan, where I got to pay less because I had more than two kids at the school. Thanks. I hated saving that money.

A half-hour later I clicked ‘complete order’ and logged off in disgust again this year. You have one of the only websites that makes people wish they were on the DMV’s website instead. Congratulations for that, I guess.

Then, moments later in my inbox, you made up for everything with your order summary email. I was thrilled to see that you thought enough of our relationship to include the following inspirational statement and handy link:

We're excited for your student's Picture Day! Click here for advice from kids on how to prepare for Picture Day!

I clicked here, and there was apparently supposed to be a video at the top of the page, and I’m sure it was adorable – probably super-cute kids giving hilariously precious advice to parents, like, “Make sure you feed your kids doughnuts on picture day, because doughnuts make you smile,” and stuff like that. I wouldn’t know, because the video failed to play. You can go ahead and make another note for your fifth grade IT guy.

Then came the five pearls of wisdom:

Use these tips to help your child get ready for a great-looking school portrait that you’ll treasure forever.

1) Help your child pick out clothes and colors that look good on them. After all, your child is the star of the photo—not their shirt, so avoid slogans, logos, and big patterns. Small jewelry and accessories are fine but nothing too big or distracting. Make sure to check your flyer to see sample poses for your Picture Day. Some poses may show pants or skirts, so plan the complete outfit.

Look, it’s either pick out the clothes for them, or get what you get. They can’t be involved in the decision making. Case in point would be that time you took a picture of Son Number Three wearing a T-shirt featuring a bear in full road leathers and gloves, riding a green motorcycle in front of a U.S. flag shaped like an outline of the United States. That ‘no logo’ advice would have been handy then.

And thanks for the pose advice. Where was this nugget a few years back when you had my kids sitting on a plastic “rock” that looked like a giant cow pie? I sent them to school in soccer shorts and your pictures ended up just showcasing all their knee injuries.

2) Glasses are okay! Lifetouch photographers know all the tricks to reduce glare.

So we should let Son Number Two wear his glasses on picture day? Thanks for the heads up. Now I feel like a jerk. A lot of those knee injuries were from trying to bike to school without his glasses that day.

3) Any hairstyle works for Picture Day. Schedule haircuts a few weeks ahead of time to allow hair to grow back a little, or you can go for a fresh-cut look.

I like how you give me so many options. One question, though. By ‘any hairstyle’ do you also mean bed head? Because bed head is by far our most common hair style for our boys on any given school day.

4) Keep kids relaxed and ready to be themselves. Smiles can look fake if they’re practiced ahead of time. Remember, smiles are like french fries—they’re better when they’re fresh.

I guess this sort of applies to Son Number Two. Son Number Three however, has never relaxed. Unless you want to take a picture of him sleeping, you’re going to have to deal with wild and crazy. And as far as Number One goes, no amount of relaxation or French fry jokes are going to help with his Chronic Forced Smile Disorder. The struggle with CFSD is real and we’re still looking for a treatment center.

5) Don’t worry about “perfect”! That hair that always sticks up or a missing tooth shows your child just as they are right now—and you’ll enjoy looking back on that for years to come. On Picture Day, teachers and volunteers will help straighten collars and check posture. And, if you like, we have retouching options for scrapes and blemishes.

Really? We’ll enjoy looking at bed head for years to come? Tell that to my wife. I’m not sure she’s buying it.

And teachers and volunteers will help straighten collars and check posture, huh? Hmm... I guess that might be true, but I think sometimes they might get sidetracked dealing with little Johnny making fart noises in line and blaming it on Suzy. Either way, could you do me a huge favor? When you look through the lens and see something other than collars or posture out of place – oh, I don’t know, like maybe food stuck to my son’s face - in two different places, I might add – could you maybe grab a wet wipe and help clean him up a tad. We’re not worrying about “perfect” over here, but we’re not going to send the grandparents a picture of our boy with an entire noodle from his macaroni and cheese stuck to his cheek.

And yes, I know all about the retouching options. I spent ten minutes clicking ‘no thanks’ to all of them before you’d let me order. I’m not willing to give you money to digitally edit out the mac ‘n cheese noodle. Napkins cost less. Let’s use them.

That’s it! Our experienced photographers are pros at making a fun and worry-free Picture Day.

OK, if you say so. Thanks for all the good advice. We’re excited about Picture Day, too.

I’m over here just giddy with anticipation. Good luck tomorrow.

All my best,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2016 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

A Seventh Open Letter to Lifetouch School Portraits

Dear Lifetouch School Portraits,

Here we are on letter number seven and I still have never heard back from you. I’m not expecting flowers and candy, but I haven’t even received so much as a short handwritten thank-you note. Nothing. Nada. I’m beginning to think that you guys don’t fully appreciate all the free business advice I’ve given you over the years.

Never fear. Because of my selfless humanitarianism, I will keep giving you helpful advice despite your apparent lack of gratitude.

I’m writing you this time to give you a friendly heads-up regarding spring pictures this year. And also to apologize again. I really don’t mean to keep sabotaging your efforts. Really!

First the heads-up. You are going to want to staff up for retakes again this year, and this time, unlike last spring pictures, it’s not entirely my fault. I don’t know if you’re aware or not, but you scheduled picture day for the Tuesday after our four-day Presidents weekend. At the morning assembly, out of umpteen hundred kids, I saw four that looked like they were dressed for picture day.

I’m not sure if any of you have school-age kids, but the first day back after a long weekend is a terrible time to schedule anything that a parent might need to remember. We’ve just spent every minute of every day with our children, for much, much longer than the natural forty-eight hour weekend window that God barely prepared us for in the first place. And the kids spent much, much longer with their siblings than normal, so they naturally fought and argued for what seemed like three hundred hours straight. And we were right there with them for the whole five hundred-hour argument. It was seven hundred hours of pure hell.

We weren’t planning for, or packing for, or paying attention to what was happening at school on Tuesday. We were just trying to get them there as fast as possible without having to justifiably murder one or all of them.

Now as you know, I couldn’t care less about spring pictures. It has become a source of amusement to me, really, to see how many pounds of unordered pictures and plastic trinkets you will send me of my three boys with sleep hair and food on their faces. You guys are hilarious. But I did see a number of students somewhat upset that their parents had forgotten it was picture day.

I passed one little girl on the way into school who was visibly upset. When I asked what was wrong she said, “Today is picture day and my mom forgot, and the spring pictures are the ones that go in the yearbook!”

I did my best to cheer her up by saying, “Our school has a yearbook?”

Maybe you guys can answer that question. Why do we have a yearbook for elementary school? That seems a lot like a graduation ceremony from preschool – just totally unnecessary. Yearbooks are for high school, and even then, they’re only marginally useful. The only time I ever looked at my high school yearbook after graduation was twenty years later before the reunion to try to remember who everyone was. And I won’t ever let my kids see it, because all the notes from my friends say stuff like “Party hearty with Bacardi!” We were soooo cool.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand. You’re going to have a lot of retakes, and I need to apologize again, because some of them are my fault. We had a very similar art docent incident again this year, as we did last year. Like I told you last year, I don’t schedule these things myself, and I don’t choose the art lessons. It’s all just crazy coincidence, I swear.

Last year we had a very unfortunate chalk and glue art lesson with Son Number Two’s class right before they went to get their pictures taken. This year, I’m happy to report, there was no chalk or glue. It was worse, actually... The art lesson that – again, completely coincidentally – occurred on picture day this year involved securing small pieces of brightly-colored tissue paper to a white background using liquid starch.

As it turns out, when you soak tissue paper in liquid starch, the colors tend to bleed out, creating a multi-hued industrial-strength dye that stains the skin. If you examine the photos you took of Son Number Three’s class yesterday, you’ll probably notice that over half of them had managed to touch at least one spot on their face with their liquid starch/tissue paper dye hands. Sorry about that. We scrubbed as best we could, but chemistry fought back and won. Maybe you’ll have better luck with Photoshop than we did with paper towels.

Also, we learned that starched tissue paper scraps bond almost permanently to second graders’ hair.

Again, very, very sorry.

Regretfully, and again, completely unintentionally,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2016 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

A Sixth Open Letter to Lifetouch School Portraits

Dear Lifetouch School Portraits,

I sincerely hate to keep bugging you guys, but I just had to bring a new development (get it?) to your attention. Actually, I’m not even sure I am bugging you with these letters, or with the bad photo developing jokes, especially since you probably don’t develop film anymore, since everything is digital now, which would explain why it’s apparently economically feasible for you to send me reams and reams of pictures every spring that I never ordered in the first place of all three of my boys in T-shirts with uncombed hair and food stuck to their faces because we didn’t care that it was picture day again, because we already got our fall pictures like only three months before... where was I?

Oh, yeah... I’m not even sure I am bugging you with these letters, since I never hear anything back from you, but as I have stated in the past, I am a selfless humanitarian – I do it for the good of all mankind. You’re welcome.

Actually, I have to take that back. I did sort of hear back from you once. I got an email from one of your young photographers a while back, responding to one of these letters. It was adorable how she tried to explain to me why I was legally required to return pictures you sent me that I never ordered, of my children that I never asked you (or even authorized you) to photograph.

I never told you her name, since her total lack of understanding of what “legally required” means gave me the distinct impression she didn’t have the authority to speak on the company’s behalf. She seemed like a nice kid and I didn’t want her to get in trouble with you management types, if in fact you do exist.

A few weeks ago I thought I was “hearing from you” in an odd passive-aggressive move when Son Number Two’s fall picture packet didn’t show up with the rest of them. His pictures were the only ones in his class to be missing, and for a moment I thought that might be too much of a coincidence given our history.

I jumped to the conclusion that you were being petty and you didn’t really appreciate all the free business advice I’ve so graciously given you all these years. I’m sorry that thought even entered my mind. His pictures had simply been misplaced, and they showed up about a week later. It was not your fault and I feel bad for even entertaining the thought that you would be anything less than professional.

Anyway, back to the current matter at hand. As you folks obviously know, picture retake day is today at my sons’ school. Sorry about writing you with this problem so late, but I just connected the dots and figured you guys probably hadn’t done so, so better late than never.

Your picture retake day poster in the front office window advertises that today is the day students can “get a second chance at a picture-perfect image.”

That might be difficult.

As you are obviously not aware, this is “Red Ribbon Week” at the school. Each day of the week we are fighting the scourge of drugs and promoting healthy lifestyle choices in a fun and positive learning environment. In other words, the kids are dressing up with a different theme each day.

Wear all red, wear team jerseys, wear patriotic clothes, etc...

Anyway, long story short, you scheduled picture retakes on pajama day.

Like I have told you, I’m a selfless humanitarian. I’m bringing this to your attention purely out of support for your company, and not for any personal reasons. This issue doesn’t affect me at all. That’s because miraculously, for the first time since all three of our boys have been in school, we don’t need retakes.

As you know, Son Number Two has always been our solid producer. He’s good in front of the camera. The other two are spotty at best.

Son Number Three is allergic to napkins. He’s spent approximately nine total minutes of his seven-year life thus far without food stuck to his face, and up to this point, none of those nine minutes lined up with picture day.

And obviously, Son Number One has Chronic Forced Smile Disorder, or CFSD, which has plagued him his whole life. Tell him a joke and he beams like a golden ray of sunshine. Try to take his picture and he smiles like he was just stabbed in the foot with a screwdriver.

But this year, somehow, the camera gods smiled down upon us, the heavens aligned, and when the shutter snapped, you produced three pictures of normal smiling, foodless versions of the boys we know and love.

However, for all the folks that needed retakes today, I’m guessing that if little Aiden’s picture showed him with a mustard stain on his shirt, the fix his parents were looking for was not to replace it with a picture of little Aiden in his Lightning McQueen jammies.

I know in the past I’ve given you amazing and free advice on how to improve your business model, but in this case I’ve got nothing for you. Nothing other than a few words of encouragement about looking on the bright side:

At least you didn’t schedule pictures on Friday. That’s Halloween costume day.

Best of luck,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2015 Marc Schmatjen

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