Sometimes it’s nice to limp through life without having certain aspects of your existence confirmed by professionals.
Australian men make a habit of this by not going to the doctor. I’m not advocating that though. I say, go, get your heart and your other bits checked. Stop leaving your dependants in the lurch by suddenly dropping off the twig in the middle Martin Place, clutching a half-eaten ham sandwich and a mobile phone that continues to say, “Larry? Are you there?” as your eyes turn up into your head.
Still, there are other things that it is not important to know. How many times your lover has cheated on you is one of those things, I reckon. Don’t tell me - I don’t want to know. If I haven’t twigged, and you haven’t given me any diseases, my life is not improved by being in full command of the facts.
Another of those non-life-threatening facts that can be happily avoided is where exactly you sit on the beauty spectrum, particularly if you occupy anywhere between ’fugly’ and ’half-sucked-mango’.
I have always been aware that I am no oil painting. People do not run from the room screaming, and I have other personality traits to help me grease the wheels of human interaction too, so I’m not crying poor. But I have had a couple of knocks over the years that tested the leatheriness of my skin.
As a 19-year-old, I accidentally overheard my girlfriend’s grandmother and mother in conversation, just after Granny had met me for the first time.
“He’s a handsome boy, isn’t he?” says the presumably short-sighted biddy.
“In an off-beat kind of way,” answers slightly better-sighted and pragmatic Mother.
I’m of an age where I’ve had enough license and ID photos taken to confirm that it’s not just a couple of ‘off ones‘… that’s how I actually look. On top of not being photogenic, I can’t smile. I’m not a natural smiler. I have no experience at holding a smile. My face looks odd doing it. I laugh a lot and I’m not an unhappy person, but the default setting on my face is not with a grin.
Emergency Contact and I had a photo shoot yesterday that will hopefully yield something un-horrifying to accompany an article we were interviewed for. The photographer took his first shot to confirm lighting and the rest, pulled the camera away from his face, looked at the screen, grimaced, and said, “Oh jeez.”
The honest, gut reaction of a professional photographer.
Needless to say, I will not be trumpeting the release of the article.
When renewing my drivers license and few years back, the 'teller' looked at the photo they had just taken and asked, nay, instructed, that it should be taken again. Nothing technically wrong with it, apparently I just looked like a bit of a dog.
ReplyDeleteThat just shows the horrible bluntness of a person who works in a dead-end job, in a soul destroying atmoshpere, who has to make themselves feel a bit better by reducing someone else. Why couldn't they just have said, "For some reason that hasn't worked, can we go again?"
ReplyDeleteBut it does remind me of a joke.
A not very good looking woman and her ugly baby are insulted at the front end of the bus by a drunk guy. She seeks teary refuge at the back with the old fellow, who seeing her distress, says, "You go and give them a piece of your mind, I'll hold your monkey for you."