UGH! 8 yr. old difficult child makes own changes to school pics!! Kind of funny (after the fact)

jal

Member
difficult child had school pics last month. Hair cut, handsomely dressed he goes to school with envelope and check in hand. Comes home and tells us he changed his background to red. WHAT? We chose gray. I would never choose red!! I figured SOMEONE would see something wrong or suspicious on the order form and go with what looks right or he was just full of it. husband calls today...pics came home. BRIGHT RED BACKGROUND!!! difficult child looks like he has red lipstick on, the red is SOOOO red!

I am livid as most of these accompany xmas gifts for family. I called husband back for the studio's number and proceed to call. Lovely woman who gave us a few options since difficult child's school doesn't do retakes (why?)...So now if they can't digitally correct, we can run to their own studio for a retake after school or get a refund. Also, sometimes they take a few with a gray or blue background and then do it with the requested background. NOT in this case of course. She checked and all shots were in red. UGH. From now on I will write all over the envelope what background we desire. Forget circling the color.

So glad I didn't have to go directly home after work...got to meet an old co-worker for a nice dinner before returning to all of the fun!
 
T

TeDo

Guest
I am SOOOOO glad neither of my kids have thought of doing this. Our school photographer charges extra for a background other than gray so they would have called me about extra money because I pay for the gray and my check would not have matched the order total. They won't process orders that aren't paid in full first.

Glad you got to enjoy at least some of your day.
 

jal

Member
Thank you, TeDo. The order was paid in full and there was no xtra charge for the background difference. You just circled the color you wanted after filling in contact info. I circled gray in the same pen that I wrote the contact info in, a not so common Cross pen, but difficult child made his own changes. With what writing implement, I do not know, but he did and they accepted it. That is what is so frustrating. He can be a trickster!
 
C

Castle Queen

Guest
Glad you could find the humor! Personally, I don't think they should offer alterate colored backgrounds. I know the one year I tried it, it was just distracting. People want to see your kid, not the background!
 

donna723

Well-Known Member
I'm glad you could at least get a laugh out of it. Some of these things take years to become funny to you.

I'll never forget my sons very first school pictures from kindergarten! I sent him to school looking all spiffy, hair neatly combed and wearing a white dress shirt and nice blue sweater. We waited and waited to get the pictures back and eagerly opened the envelope. OMG! His sweater and shirt collar were all crooked and his hair looked like squirrels had been nesting in it, sticking up all over his head! I know exactly what happened ... he hated to wear sweaters and would pull them off as soon as he got on the bus ... so apparently they put the sweater back on him but nobody bothered to comb his hair. But the funniest part was that there were TWO pictures stuck together! In one, he was facing the camera but his eyes were looking right down at the floor! Then the photographer must have told him to "Look Up!" because in the second one, his head hadn't moved at all but his eyes were looking straight up at the ceiling! To see the two poses side-by-side was hysterical but it wasn't a bit funny at the time!
 

gcvmom

Here we go again!
My difficult child 2 did the SAME thing in 6th grade :) HE chose green. BRIGHT green. As opposed to my blue selection which complemented his skin tone and clothing choices better. Oh well, we have this forever memento of him exercising free will, lol. I was annoyed, though, that the studio would allow a student to change the background despite what the PARENT had ordered. That just doesn't seem right.
 

jal

Member
It took a few hours and a call to the studio for options in fixing this for me to find the humor! I was livid and I was at work at the time, so you know how that goes. At least I'm not alone in this. I never thought he'd have the nerve to do it, but UGH that's the way he is.
 

Shari

IsItFridayYet?
i always let wee have a big say in what he wears and the background color. if he's happy about it, the pics are always better. this year's is a little odd, but his smile sparkles. lol

but i'd be a little tee'd, too. they didn't notice an 8 year old had changed the order????
 

AnnieO

Shooting from the Hip
RED?!

Since the gray always seems so dark, we usually get blue or green for Jett's pictures. IF it's not more expensive!

This year, Onyxx changed her background... Sigh. But the picture of her is so beautiful, I refused to send them back for retakes! Graffiti isn't my favorite, but it's not as bad as I thought.
 

SRL

Active Member
I do hope this winds up being one of those things you can look back and just roll your eyes and laugh about someday. I know it's frustrating now, but in the whole scheme of life it's just a school picture. I think I'd stick with red and frame the biggest one to hang in a really prominent place for the teen years. :christmaslights:

Then again, having kids who've hid their announcements to the school music program in their closet so they don't have to go and who have crossed out the "Yes, I'm available to chaperone" boxes I checked has probably left me with the totally wrong automatic reaction to this sort of thing.:rolleyes:
 

busywend

Well-Known Member
I was thinking the same thing as SRL - this is one of those things you should not waste time stressing over - it will be a non-issue in a few days and someday you will look back on it and even tell the story while chuckling about it.

Really, this is no biggie. Even if you give the red color background as Xmas gifts - everyone knows school pics are not the greatest, but when they hear he changed his background they might even cherish it all the more. And have a funny story to tell whomever they show.
 
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