It was school photos last week. As usual, I’d forgotten to pay attention and when I looked at the girls, like really LOOKED at them, on the morning of the photo shoot I realised they really needed haircuts. Every year we get the same dodgy shots of them with unruly hair because I can’t manage to get them to the hairdresser in time for the school photo day. Yet another black mark against my mothering scorecard.
We’d managed to lose the forms so there was the standard flurry of turning the house upside down to find them, unfortunately the girls are now of an age to realise that quite a lot of our disorganisation is down to me. “We gave you those forms AGES ago. You were supposed to go online STRAIGHT AWAY and pay.” Well yes, but I was busy on Twitter at the time and got distracted. Even if I had gone online and paid we still need the FORMS with a code on them for you to hand in to the photographer.
In the nick of time forms were found and funds transferred. Then I realised I didn’t have anything for a sibling photo. Do they not do sibling photos? Need to mention at this point in time, neither girl actually wants ANY photos let alone a sibling shot.
“We need a photo of the two of you together, look it says on their website they do it, I WANT ONE.”
“Oh please Mum just drop it, you have millions of photos, we don’t need another one.”
But being the interfering, overbearing mother I am I ring the photographer. He politely informs me, as detailed in the school newsletter, they will do sibling shots, but you have to pick up the form from the front office and pay immediately. I really should start reading the newsletter again. I scrounge together $15 in loose change from the back of the lounge, get the all-important form and voila my children are now in the queue for sibling photos. They are fighting like cats ‘n dogs but for one still moment in time, they will cease the arguing and smile at the camera so their mother can pretend that all was peaceful and beautiful in the world of sisterly love. Then the war will resume.
My other great discovery on school photo day was the loss of the class photo. Remember those? When, as a class you, would be dragged into the hall, ordered from shortest to tallest and unimaginatively arranged in a clump of standing and sitting bodies. Ours were done in our English class. Until the senior years when there was so few of us battling on we could combine for a “year” shot.
They don’t do them anymore. Now you get a thumbnail head shot of everyone in your year printed on one sheet. Which is kinda good that you’ve got a record of everybody you ever went to school with, but I think we’ve lost something with the demise of the class shot.
That group photo says so much. There’s the class clown who always managed to sneak in a funny face, the changing heights over the years, the scrawny boys suddenly graduating to the back line where the girls had dominated, the chance to prove to my kids that once I was tall and skinny. There’s the other stuff too, the scuffed floor of the hall brings back memories of forced dance classes – yes we made to learn the barn dance and strip the willow I can’t remember why. The windows behind us were the rooms where we were taught English. That’s where I first heard of Shakespeare, TS Elliot, Browning, Animal Farm, Brave New World, Catcher in the Rye.
We scrubbed up all right for our photos. We didn’t do too bad in life either, a bunch of country kids from the public high school. We went on to be teachers, nurses, there’s a doctor and a lawyer, a real estate agent, an art restorer and an assortment of other careers. Some of us moved away, some stayed and went on to send their own kids to our old high school. I wonder if they get class photos?
It’s 30 years since Year 10 this year. I’m not sure how that happened. We’ll be getting back together for a reunion.
Do your kids still get class photos in high school?
only up to grade 8 because after that home room is simply what ever your first class happens to be and that changes 2nd semster??
How interesting that it seems to be a lost tradition WORLD WIDE (well at least in our two worlds).
Yes! My daughter handed me her school photos yesterday and there was a lovely big class photo. The most notable thing was it looks like the cast of Puberty Blues, the original version – long, long hair with a middle part was obviously the look for girls 3 months ago.
Right we are moving to the city. I want Class Photos. That’s hysterical that they all look like they have stepped out of the 70’s.
My year 10 photo has a girl sticking her finger up ‘discreetly’ in the back row, perhaps that is one reason why they went to individual shots, though I agree that it is sad that they no longer do the group photo. There was definitely something great about going down to the school gym and getting into height order, old school style!
See it just takes one bad egg to spoil it for us all!! I know I got all nostalgic thinking about it this morning, it’s was quite fun having the group photo done.
my school has class pictures! and an all-school photo taken outside! when they took the faculty photo, i forgot, so it’s “as is”, but there you go.
your school picture morning adventures are very familiar! but no sibling shots here.
happy weekend, n
My daughter just started year 8, first year of high school here in country WA, and they get a Form Photo, which is a random group of years 8 to 10 kids in the form class. There’s 23 in the class and only 6 of them are year 8’s, two girls and four boys. Bit weird. Funnily though, one of her cousins in year 10 is in the form and so is my best friend’s year 10 son!
That’s a funny way of doing it isn’t it? But it did work out well to cousin and your best friends child in it!!
They don’t do them anymore?!?!? That’s crazy!! I LOVED those photos. I put them in my school days books every year. Goodness, they absolutely need to start doing this again – it provides so much more entertainment in the years to come.