Week 18

Awkward and Ugly or Cute and Sassy—You Vote

Before you begin this week’s installment, read my mother’s letter to the editor on page 4. Go ahead. I’ll wait. I’ve got some knitting here I can do. Tum te tum te tum…

Okay, did you read it? Or did you just rustle the pages to make me think you’d read it? If so, you’re just a big poop.

Anyway, let me start by saying that I do not photograph well. As a matter of fact, in most pictures I look like a monkey with dentures in wearing a fur-lined hood. So, when I got this column two and a half years ago, and Brad Ruebensaal told me I had to have a picture taken, I nearly threw up right there in my Cheerios.

Last year’s picture, fortunately, turned out very well; this could have something to do with the fact that I sold my soul to the Kodak corporation for it.

This year, however, I have not fared so well.

I’m sure you all remember the unspeakable hideousness of the picture I used until last week, the one that burns the eyes so badly that those who look upon it must wander the earth forever, or until they find a picture of Heidi Klum to heal their cankerous sockets.

That picture was taken at the height of my most recent awkward phase. Unlike most people, I go through an awkward phase about every six years, and it causes me to do weird things like wear Hawaiian shirts, have pinkeye for ten months, style my hair with an egg beater, and cock my head to the side like a very stupid dog. And then go get my picture taken for the paper.

Now, with my new hairdo and pinkeye-less, contact-clad eyes, I thought I’d get a new picture taken. Good idea, no? So Brad came back, and of the pictures he shot, four came out okay, but one was unusable because it was basically me sticking out my boobs.

So I thought, why not be zany and unconventional, and use the one where I’m laughing? Then, everyone will know my column is funny, because no one would put a picture of themselves laughing next to a column about death and sadness.

Unfortunately, the hilarity of this idea is lost on my mother, who has spent her entire life trying to make me look like other people, and by other people I mean forty-year-old people who wear business suits and pleated slacks.

On the Friday after my picture first ran, she called me up and told me she and my father planned to boycott my column until I got a new picture or went back to the old one, which I will never do, even if an army of swarthy half-men, half-poop-encrusted elephants came down and threatened to trample me to death unless I changed it.

In response, I told her to write a letter to the editor if she hated it so much.

So, she did.

Now, this is where it gets interesting for you, dear reader. Obviously, I like the new picture, mainly because I don’t look like a total freak. My mother, however, seems to disagree.

I propose, then, having a vote to see which picture stays in—the old, nasty ugly one, the new, cute svelte one, or a brand new, as-yet untaken one. This is where you come in: seeing as how it is illegal for me to, say, take votes from people like Cary Grant and Moses, I will need the support of you, the reading public.

E-mail, write, call, or just tell me your vote. I’ll be announcing the results in the issue after Spring Break.

So come on, vote, it only takes a few seconds and you don’t even have to register. And you’ll be making dramatic changes to the world around you. Plus, if you vote for my mom, you’re a big mama’s boy and you wear frilly underpants.

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