“Smiling is contagious. Be a carrier!” - a motel sign

the dreaded smileitis     

I hate picture day. It’s like the starting point of a dreadful disease, one that deserves quarantine. Everyone mills about, stealing the cheap plastic combs the PTO volunteers have set out in flimsy cardboard boxes; everyone pretending to have totally forgotten that this is the day their yearbook careers are set in stone. If you ignore the fact that they check themselves out––really!––in every vaguely mirrored surface around the school, you just might be fooled by their oh-so-nonchalant attitudes.

‘Might’ definitely being the operative word in that sentence.

Me, I’m dressed in my usual attire; jeans, sneakers, T-shirt, hair held back in a ponytail by a fifty cent scrunchie. It’s orange, and quite ugly, but as the camera isn’t going to focus on the back of my head anyway, I figure it’s not worth the effort. I am all set to be grouchy, as I have for the past three years; it flits briefly through my mind that, perhaps, for this senior photo, I should try to look happy. I am certainly pleased enough to be getting out of this straitjacket of a school, and if nothing else, it would appease my relatives. Then again, when I look back on my middle school pictures (back when I actually had a life and extra-curricular snapshots, hence attempting to look photogenic), I still looked like a deflated plastic cow. Frankly, by now, I see no reason to expend the effort.

There is a group of girls just around the cinderblock corner, dressed in polo shirts––real Ralph Lauren label and all––fitted T-shirts and, one, in a full-out Abercrombie-coordinated wardrobe. Mix and match and all that. I’m not sure whether to be amused or disgusted. It seems kind of over-done: this is a school picture , not a modeling shot. Ah, well, to each their own; if she wants to make a fool out of herself, let her. I have no part in it.

I make it through morning classes and get to the cafeteria, reflect on the fact that having lunch before the actual photographs are taken is monumentally stupid, due to the large number of people whose teeth still have braces in residence, then buy a ham sandwich that looks vaguely edible. Choosing, once again, to forego the honor of sitting in the ‘Seniors Corner’ of the room, thereby avoiding spitballs from the boys and the alternately pitying and revolted looks from those tender beings of my own gender. I cannot wait to get out of this town.

The sandwich has suspicious looking Swiss cheese, but I decide to risk it. I’m hungry, my own braces were taken off last year, so I don’t have to worry about having little bits of sketchy cheese (or questionable meat or surprisingly normal-looking bread) stuck in my teeth. I do not, however, check to see if the cheese bounces. That would be tempting the fates.

A shadow comes across my side of the table, in the shape of . . . yes, indeed, it is in the shape of a person holding a lunch tray! My, how remarkable. I have not enjoyed human company during lunches since tenth grade. I am the type of person who is dropped like a hot plate when better company comes along. I don’t mind too terribly, I guess; I know I’m not easy to get along with, even ignoring the pessimism and sarcasm that dots my speech. I grimace, however, in an effort to drive this person away before they push me. Just because I do not blame those who leave me doesn’t mean there is no hurt stashed away.

“Look like you’re enjoying yourself, there,” comes a pleasantly dry voice that sounds vaguely familiar, though I can’t place it. How strange; not only does a person come in my vicinity, but they have a sense of humor! “Can I sit?” And they want to sit with me!

I nod, not trusting myself to do anything else, since I am rather shocked, and when shocked I tend to ramble to the annoying extreme. I finally get the nerve to look up at the young woman across from me, and again I get the feeling that she is extremely familiar. Talk about déja vù.

Then it hits me. She looks a bit like me. No, more than a bit. Quite a lot, actually. Her features, however, are softer, kinder; more inclined to smiling than scowling, I would guess, which is absolutely unlike my own face.

“So,” I start, then realize I have nothing to say. I tell her that, and she cracks a smile––no, it’s definite: while I would not be surprised if she had been mistaken for me from a few yards away, she is much prettier than I am. And I was right, that she smiles more easily than I do.

“You should cheer up,” she says. “You always look down on life.”

I am surprised. I have never seen this person before, and here she is critiquing my attitude. Nevertheless, I am known, or like to think I am known, for taking peculiar things in stride, so I reply, “Yes, I’d rather thought that was the meaning of pessimist. Y’know?”

“Ah, but you are only a self-proclaimed pessimist. That doesn’t count.”

“That could be because there is no one else around to agree. Your philosophy intrigues me. Please explain.”

She does so, talking about self-perceptions and their way of inclined-plane-wrapped-around-a-cylindrical-base-ing with reality. So sue me, I’m a physics geek. She talks clearly, even eloquently, and at length, until even I have to agree with her. I congratulate her on her ability, and she laughs. It’s not a delicate, simpering laugh like many girls seem to have adopted recently, nor is it an irritating belly-laugh; it’s more of a deep-in-the-throat kind of husky chuckling. It’s not all that horrible to listen to. Rather nice, actually.

“You have no idea,” she says, and pats my arm. It tingles.

As she turns to walk away, I manage to call out, “Hey, how come I haven’t seen you before?”

She half-turns, another one of those slow smiles on her face. “You’ve never looked hard enough.”

And with that cryptic answer, she saunters down the hall, out of my sight.

The bell rings, I gather up my books automatically, sigh, and make my way toward the auditorium and my impending doom.

“Oh my God, I’m going to look soooo bad!!” the girl in front of me complains, loudly. You can hear the extra punctuation in her whiny voice. In fact, although her blonde hair is showing her dark roots, she looks absolutely fine. She is no Helen of Troy, but then, neither am I, nor are most of the rest of the girls in this school. She will do fine in the shark-infested waters of the photographic sea. I, on the other hand, with my past failures at looking less than dorky on camera behind me, am leaving a metaphorical blood trail––I will be eaten alive by those dreadful black and silver contraptions that capture little bits of soul. Usually the ugly bits.

They call her name, Angela Scarpatti-Dash-Something-Or-Other; I’ve seen it in the school phone book. It’s almost surreal, remembering that once-upon-a-time, I was on fairly good terms with this nutcase. (Hey, pot. Meet kettle.) She wrings her hands once, twice, pats down her hair, then steps up to a blue background that matches her eyes.

You can tell you’re in an upper middle-class white-kid school when, in the yearbook package, there comes an option to choose the color of your background.

I decided on green, for no reason other than that I like green. I don’t look particularly wonderful with the color, but I don’t look so great with any other color, either, so it really doesn’t matter. Besides, green seemed popular last year, which gives me more time to stall before I have to ‘step up to the plate’, as it were.

But, eventually, my name is called by the nasally voice of a soccer mom. Either she has a cold or has nagged her kids, husband included, one too many times. I consider asking, but I’m kind of afraid of her and the way she radiates Exuberant Momhood, the kind of mother who says “I May Dislike How You Make Me Chauffeur You Everywhere, But By God I Will Do It! Also I Will Clean House And Make Your Costumes And Do Your Homework And Live Vicariously And Enjoy It!” And so when she asks, “Eva Gaboré?”, I just nod my confirmation and move quickly out of her reach.

On impulse, I let down my hair, frizzy and midway between my shoulder and my elbow. It can’t get worse, and when my hair is up I tend to look like a boy, as I learned painfully last year. I stuff the ugly scrunchie in my jeans pocket and walk towards the hanging green background.

“Just you sit right there,” says the photographer, pointing to a little cushion-thing with handholds. “Kneel and hang onto the handles, darlin’, yes that’s right. Now look toward the blue dot on the camera . . . . “ I do so, the flash goes off, I blink rapidly, and that’s the end of it. Glowering as always. “Lovely, dear, lovely,” says the man absently, and I have to stifle a bark of laughter. Lovely, my donkey’s posterior.

I put my hair back up, hunch over, stick my hands in my pockets and hurry to math. At least I can deal with formulas; they’re not flashy in any sense of the word, and they don’t find it necessary to scold you if you use them incorrectly.

Several weeks later, I look at the opaque white envelope with dismay. For the last eleven years, school pictures have arrived face-first, with little plastic windows in the front of the snazzy envelopes. Apparently, the company ran into some tight budget spots this year. While I am thankful, because no one will see my pictures before I do, I’m also slightly disappointed––at least the other way you got the ‘ouch’ factor over with right away.

The last bell of the day rings, and I step around various cliques comparing their photos (oh, and Angela’s came out perfectly fine, as per usual). I wait until I’m home, at the kitchen table in our apartment, before daring to undo the doohickey that holds the flap closed. I take out the first one that comes to hand; the sole eight-by-twelve, since my  mom went for the cheapo package. I have to say, I don’t really blame her, especially with my history of throwing out some of the smaller-sized ones, back in the day when this was a two-income family and not everything was saved-saved-saved, no matter its use or lack thereof.

The glossy paper comes out backward. Oh my, the suspense is just killing me. A-whoop-dee-doo. As I turn it over, an unnecessary, and therefore annoying, apprehension fills me. Grr, chemical levels in my brain. I dislike you.

But there is not the usual angry figure, with her constantly irritated demeanor. No; instead, the face is softer, kinder, more inclined to smile than to scowl.

The corners of my mouth turn up, against my will.

Well, sorta. I guess I wouldn’t mind letting out one of the symptoms of smileitis every now and then. After all, it’s not exactly deadly.

--

1. rough draft, only vaguely looked over, so please forgive any major errors.

2. If you see words that seem to be repeated unnecessarily (not including words like ‘a’ or ‘the’ or ‘is’ and so on) please notify me. Also, are all the parentheses/semi-colons irritating?

3. How’dja like it?

4. Heh. Eva Gaboré. Green Acres with a twist, anybody? Ah . . . I am such a geek.