Little Boy, Pretty Girl, Awkward Photo

Awkward Family Photos is a go-to website for a bored-at-work afternoon pick-me-up.  Most of the "awkwardness" in the contributed photos derives from dated fashions or photos taken in our inherently most awkward years.  The site is good-hearted nostalgia where twenty to thirty years passing cures any cringe reflex.  We were all there along with the people in the photos.  We can look back at ourselves, laugh, and wonder what were we thinking.

A more contemporaneous photo caught my attention several weeks ago.  Five Hooters beauties surround a young boy who clearly doesn't want to be there:

"Is it over yet? I'm just here for the wings..."

I love that photo, because I was that little boy.  Twenty years ago my younger brother, my dad, his friend and son, and a couple of my uncle took a guy's weekend (with my aunt in tow) to watch Notre Dame football play Purdue (final score, ND 48-0).  Walking around campus in the run-up to the game, we passed two cheerleaders and we asked them to take a photo with us ("we asked" didn't include me).  I was placed next to the very pretty one with the early-90s big hair, who put her arm around my shoulder:

"Is it over yet?"

When I look back on that photo, I'm "smiling" more than I remember (it must have been politeness).  I vividly recall the over-whelming sense of full-consciousness of her hand resting on my shoulder.  I felt exactly what the Hooter's boy's face conveys.  What was I supposed to do?  Certainly not place my hand anywhere on her.  To cheesy middle-schoolers, pretty college girls are an untouchable caste.  I knew to lower my eyes in her presence and not meet her gaze.  In the context of such social asymmetry, the best that can be done is to stand stiff and hope the photo is taken as quickly as possible.

Afterwards my dad and uncles teased me "Ooh, she liked T.J., putting her arm around you!".  Today I wonder if she also felt a similar awkwardness ("what am I supposed to do?"), but her years of cheerleading better equipped her with the art of fake-smiling.  After unconveing this photo I attempted (unsuccessfully) to find a cheerleader's roster from that period, thinking I might be able to locate her online.  Maybe we both might have had a laugh.

Several years after this photo was taken would find me posing similarly with dates in formal dance photos.  It's a slow process to break the "rather-be-hiding" instinctive response.

Gooooooooooooo Irish!