For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for November 02, 2022

For sure that has happened in every school year, Michael, ever since kindergarten.

Why did you pose so stupidly even once?

Oh. Teenager. That’s right. Never mind. ;-)

They still used film when this strip first ran. No delete buttons. ;-)

That happened to me in 3rd grade. The photographer was trying to make me laugh and my picture came out with a silly smirk!

Well, I assume this is your Grade 11 picture. Wonderful legacy to your children and grandchildren. Hope you will do better with your senior portrait next year. Ya know, the one they hang on the wall or put on a shelf to memorialize your final year of secondary school and the final year of your childhood before you enter college and the adult world. I sometimes come across my high school portrait (hidden in a bottom drawer of a file cabinet) or my college portrait (same place) and look at my young self in wonder that I was once upon a time that young and pretty (currently sporting a mop of white hair and some wrinkles). Sometimes I have trouble believing I was ever that person in these portraits. I don’t think my sons ever saw those portraits. They probably will when I pass and they have to clean out my file cabinet and say " Was that MOM?"

Panel 4: Two peas in the moron pod..

School photographers (at least at my school) come back 2 or 3 weeks later to do retakes. That’s because of absentees and more probably because of situations like this where they know parents will pay double the costs to get a decent portrait of their precious children, when they show the parent the first stupid picture!

should’ve seen them trying to get my drivers license picture…….

What seems clever/funny in the moment may have some embarrassing/not-so-funny consequences in the future.

Reminds me of an episode of LEAVE IT TO BEAVER where (on a dare from Gilbert), Beaver makes a face as the school photo was taken.

I tried doing something like that for my driver’s license picture, but they wouldn’t let me.

And to think photographers fight for the school picture franchise. Git ’er done kid… next!

Did Calvin learn about posing for pictures from Michael? As seen in Calvin & Hobbes “Doggone it Calvin, that is another picture ruined! Can’t you look pleasant for 1/500th of a second?”

I was first in line for our college photo ID’s and the photographer wasn’t set up yet. I sat there for at least a half hour while he got the camera and lights correct. All of a sudden I hear a click, and then him saying, “Next”. Every time I had to show someone my ID they always commented on how bored I looked in the photo. I was!

I don’t think a picture of me exists from age 9 to my driver license photo. I’m happy about that. The age 9 picture was a school picture – no way to duck it – that used really cheap dye. A year later my blue shirt looked very green and my face looked orange. I wasn’t even planning to run for president of the US in the next century.

Michael can forget about becoming the President of Canada. If his opponents get ahold of that photo, it would be ammunition they could use against him.

On senior picture day, someone decided that a group of girls would wear the same necklace. I was happy to be included. Then when yearbook came out, almost all of them had gone to a private photographer for a better picture. 60 years, still mad.

You live and learn kid….or not!

At least he’ll look perfectly natural and instantly recognizable.

Well, at least you don’t have to buy it if you don’t like it. I would so have bought it and welcomed it into the yearbook. But, I’m weird that way and everyone knows it. Not sorry.

When I was a kid, if you didn’t like the pictures, there would be picture make up day. You would have to pay for it though.

“Well, kids, your dad was dorky in school.”

The photographer, like so many commenters, have no sense of humor. Oh well Michael, live and learn. It’s pretty much meaningless anyhow.

And whose fault is that, Michael?

A future situation, where Michael is in journalism. He is on a plane when his radio scanner listens into a secret conversation between the pilot and the air traffic control, warning that they are delaying landings due to terrorists sabotaging the airport. Michael, being a typical journalist, figures it should be “in the interest of the people” (as well as his own career) to broadcast it. He calls the network, who demands to put though. The TV station goes live, and uses the photograph seen in the first panel.

Screen crawl: Voice of Michael Patterson.

Why is the photographer wearing a Groucho Marx disguise?

only in cartoons.

OK Mike…. All you have to do is to put your two front teeth forward. From there I don’t know where you go. Corn-on-the-Cob eating contests maybe?

HAA HAA

They probably did, Michael. But, as usual you weren’t paying attention.

When our granddaughter was in third grade she whipped out a pair of giant pink sunglasses her parents didn’t even know she had. They took the school picture that way.

When have there EVER been s “second take” in class pictures???

Always felt school photos were just a way to milk money from the students and their families. Basically agrift, just like class rings. Everyone has to buy them.

Trying to match today’s actual looks at the annual ‘Class Reunion’, compared to the HS photo’s – it is very hard to match them with one another. Time sure does take its toll…