Best Friends, Occasional Enemies: The Lighter Side of Life as a Mother and Daughter (Reading Group Gold) Read Free Page A

sit, happily, in the dark.

Picture Day
    By Lisa
    I read in the paper that nowadays, the companies who take school pictures will retouch the photos to remove the kids’ cowlicks, missing front teeth, and freckles.
    This is not progress.
    Reportedly, ten percent of parents request such retouching.
    The other ninety percent love their children.
    Apparently, some parents like to see their children as they should be, instead of how they are. Or maybe they’re Photoshopaholics.
    I can’t think of a better message a parent can send a child than, “You’re almost good enough!”
    I never saw a photo of Daughter Francesca that I would retouch. I loved her face and the way it changed as she grew up. Plus the retouching cost seventeen dollars. Parents who request it should put the money toward their child’s eventual therapy bill.
    This doesn’t mean that some kids wouldn’t benefit from retouching, or even that some kids aren’t downright ugly. Lots of us have faces only a mother would love, especially during our Wonder Years.
    Me, especially.
    I look back on my school pictures with a queasy feeling, and that’s as it should be.
    Let me explain.
    I was smokin’ hot until I turned two years old, then it went from bad to worse, when my baby teeth fell out, only to be replaced by two front teeth that stuck straight out, defying gravity. They used to call them buck teeth, but that would be kind. No buck had these teeth. As a toddler, I could have built a dam.
    Also, my nose, which started out cute and little, grew and grew and forgot to stop. It popped out like Pinocchio’s, and I’m not lying. The Flying Scottolines have big noses. Mother Mary says that we get more oxygen than anybody else, and she’s right. If we breathe in, you’re dead.
    Plus, my eyes, which looked so round and blue when my nose was little, seemed to shrink and flatten as my nose got bigger, and then I got thick glasses, so I looked like a beaver with corrective lenses.
    The proof is my school pictures, which reflect all those hideous stages of my life, all the zits and tinsel teeth and pixie haircuts and horrible clothes. Still, I don’t think Mother Mary would have retouched a single picture. She loved me the way I was and she would have spent the seventeen bucks on cigarettes.
    Plus, retouching a school photo would have taken all the fun out of Picture Day. Do you remember that excitement? In the Scottoline household, Picture Day was circled on the calendar, and it was a big deal. Brother Frank and I wore our best clothes, and we got combs at school.
    Free!
    It’s always exciting to get something free, even a comb. Now, we watch Oprah, where she gives away her favorite things, for free. Cars, TVs, lasagna pans. You know what my favorite thing would be?

    Yes, this is the retake.
    Being Oprah’s favorite thing.
    But back to Picture Day.
    I remember long lines of kids leading to a mysterious black curtain set up in the gym, and when you were finally ushered behind the curtain, you were in the presence of the photographer, as personable as the Wizard of Oz. He would order you to smile, blind you with a flash, and get you out of there, reeling.
    Then you would wait and wait until pictures came in, which was another day of excitement. There would be the various photo packages to choose from, and you’d end up with 383,898 wallet-size photos, even if you knew only four wallets.
    When those photos came back, if you looked good, you showed everybody. And if you didn’t, everybody knew.
    The dreaded Retakes.
    I was always a Retake. I dressed up for Retake Day, like a nervous batter on a second strike. Retakes were a mark of kiddie shame. All of us baby trolls, lined up and dressed to the nines, when nobody else was. And no more free combs. They knew we weren’t worth it. I would have been a Re-Retake if they had it, but there was only so much they could do, then.
    Now, I’d ask to be retouched.
    You have to be at least fifty years old to be