January 17th, 2005
Smile Like You Mean It
Man, I’ve got to finish my mid-term paper. That professor I have sure is hard. You know, the professor I have at the college I go to.
’Cause I’m still in college.
At least that’s what a whole lot of ticket salespeople all over the country think. Movies, museums, plays, concerts: all of them offer discounts with a student ID. I still have mine from my ECU days. And I still use it to get the discounts.
Dishonest? Maybe. But the nearest I can tell, because I went to college, I’m going to be making monthly payments until I’m 35. This is my way of getting something back. Ideally, I could keep this going until I’ve at least made up for the interest on my student loans.
It would have been nice of East Carolina to a provide me with a quality ID that would last that long. The printing on my OneCard is starting is fading, fast. Soon it will just be a piece of yellow plastic.
I have a back-up: an international student ID from my study abroad. It’s in better shape, but I’d rather not use it if I didn’t have to. This is because the picture is, hands-down, the worst photo ever taken of me. Quite possibly the worst photo ever taken of anyone (for ID purposes, anyway).
I know, a lot people think their ID photos are bad. “My license picture is, like, the ugliest one in history,” they say. And everyone takes turns looking at it. Maybe their hair looks funny or they’re not smiling. Still it’s never that bad.
“I have the worst ID photo ever,” I usually interject. (I’m strangely proud of how awful this photo is.)
“Oh, you should see my work ID. It’s even worse than my license…” everyone begins chiming in.
Then I get out my wallet and slide it out. Eventually, the group humors me and looks. They can hardly believe it. “Wow…um…that’s…really, really bad.” They search my face for permission to burst into laughter, which I always give them. And they always do.
For an international student ID they use an alternate version of your passport photo, so I had an extra one taken at Kinko’s. (Lesson I learned the hard way: Do not go to Kinko’s and pay $12 to get your passport photo taken. You can use any photo that meets the size requirements the government has posted online. I did my sister’s with a digital camera and an inkjet printer.) The Kinko’s guy takes these photos all day long, so you know he’s seen some bad ones, and yet, from the minute my Polaroid finished developing, he could not stop laughing. Before he showed it to me he made sure he’d taken it around to everyone else working behind the counter and showed them. Then he came back, handed it across the register and said: “When they see this, they’ll re-route you to Amsterdam.” There I was, eyes half-way closed; big, goofy grin. I could not have imitated the expression of someone who had three functioning brain cells more perfectly if I was trying. Of course, I wasn’t trying. I was trying to make the expression an upstanding young man — one who would never be involved in smuggling or terrorism or espionage of any kind — would make. I missed by a mile.
This, and the fact that I didn’t make a habit of shaving, showering, brushing my hair, sleeping, or eating back then (these days I see pictures of myself from college and wonder why I did not get spare change from people who thought I was homeless) and the fact that whatever lens Kinko’s uses puts a slight fishbowl-type distortion on its photos, making all of my features even bigger and rounder, combined to create the “perfect storm” of bad ID photos.
Being a poor college student, I did not have another $12 to try it again, so I swallowed my pride, took it, and sent it off. The workers at international student ID headquarters then mounted it, copied it for their records, and laminated it, so it would be preserved for all eternity…laughing their asses off the whole time, I’m certain.
I’m probably not doing this justice with my description. I should just post my awful ID photo here for all to see, shouldn’t I?
Maybe another day. Right now I’m heading out to play some frisbee on the quad.
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