Oh, School Photographer ...

How despised you've become.

You backgrounds are hokey, your lighting formulaic. Your three-quarter poses are always just a teeny bit off.

The smiles you elicit, time after time, make our children nearly unrecognizable.

You give us a menu of choices and then offer no substitutions. Of course then you make your own substitution and offer us the choice to fix it ... with reprints.

Oh, and your prices ... They make us cringe, and rail against you. Yet, they are cleverly concocted to ensure most of us return a check rather than the photographs.

It's just a business you're in. I know.

The ever-cheapening surprise in a Cracker Jack box.

It's not your fault.

Would these mothers and fathers of children complain if you were supplying any other product?

A second beer that tasted nothing like its predecessor would surely be rejected with more venom, no?

Amateurs. So what they take better pictures?

You have something they don't.

You are selling the school experience in all its Look-this-way-and-Smile awkwardness.

You are selling photographs that will come back to haunt people.

You are selling the stuff of blackmail.

Don't ever change.