Do you take a good picture?

I don’t mean are you good behind the camera…I mean are you what they call “photogenic?”

I do something weird with my mouth and my chin the minute I know a camera is pointed in my direction. I screw up my face, twist my neck, frown and flare my nostrils and my eyes clamp shut. At least that’s how it appears to me whenever I see a photo someone’s taken of me.

I hate having my picture taken. Either I’m much homelier than I believe or the camera and I don’t get along. I cannot duplicate in the mirror the face that I see captured in time (and for future generations) in way too many photos to count.

License photos are so bad I once had a cop tell me I looked nothing like my photo, while he was trying to keep from laughing in my face. His whole body was shaking with controlled and silent laughter. (In this particular license photo, I appeared to be projectile vomiting…) Only good thing was I did not get the speeding ticket. I think he was having so much fun with my picture he forgot why he was looking at it in the first place.

Back in the days when “bar tricks” could buy you a free beer, I always knew that this photo would cause the bartender to serve one up on the house…

“Hey Harry, gotta see this license picture (doubling over with guttural guffaws…) man you look like Rosemary’s baby or that head spinning girl in the Exorcist.”

“Thanks, give me my free drink now.”

Okay so that’s a license photo…hardly anyone likes their license photo. But these odd contortions of my countenance happen in every picture.

Am I a card carrying mouth breather or what other excuse do I have for always having my mouth open? Are my eyes (in the few photos in which they are open) really fire-engine red? Why do I tuck my chin into my chest? Why the odd lip crinkle? Where did my shoulders go?

My passport photo is bad too, but in a different way. I am wearing a black leather jacket and a black turtleneck. I have the expression of a hardened criminal or a blonde terrorist. I look like I eat babies – my smile’s really a sneer and I’m giving a whopping “stink-eye” to the world.

In my photo ID for the local golf course, I look like an offspring of Kermit the frog. My whole face is green. Sure, these are quick pictures taken by non-pros, but no other person getting a photo ID that day came out green. I checked in the mirror and honestly I was not green on that day…but you can’t prove it by the picture.

I could go on but you get my drift here.

When I see a camera I want to cry. When you see the subsequent pictures you’ll want to laugh.

And this is what I’m thinking about as Sunday’s family reunion grows closer. All those cameras pointed in my direction; the calls to me, the shouts, hey wait, don’t take the picture yet, get Mary in it…come on Mary, get in the picture...

Hellllpppppp!!!!!!