oh yes

Lucky for me, students at my school go down to the auditorium to take their yearbook photos during their English classes once a year. Today was that day, and oh man is it awesome to watch people take their yearbook photos. Big, toothy, ridiculous grins. Weird, toothless, stretched-lip smiles that pose as real smiles but are just weird facial expressions. Kids who "don't smile for pictures." All of this stuff is great. And that's before you even consider the photographer's directions to "turn your head just a little that way," or "shoulders back."

You might be thinking that this doesn't sound funny, and if so, you might also be forgetting how cool the average fifteen-year-old is trying to look most of the time. And you might be the kind of person who, admirably, doesn't take just a little bit of pleasure in watching awkward but harmless self-consciousness.

I assure you; it's funny.

I even had one student who intentionally tried all these "model" poses (eg. fist under the chin, arms crossed and looking over one shoulder, lips pursed into a kissy face, etc.) while the increasingly frustrated photographer humorlessly repeated, "You can't do that... can't do that either... can't do that either..."


Every time I watch this, I laugh out loud at Bill's face at the end.