Cheese!

I would say that pretty much every instant of my family photo session was hysterical. It would likely suffice to say that we had our family picture taken at Kiddie Kandids, but I will trek on to give you the gory details of good intentions gone awry. My grandma had taken a four generation picture at Kiddie Kandids (which, if you can't tell from the name, specializes in taking pictures of young children... candidly). Apparently, she was so enthused with the whole ensemble that for Christmas she provided each family with an all-expenses-paid trip to the land o' kid photos.
The day of the photo shoot found several members of my family in a not overly happy mood; this mood was unfortunately only exacerbated when we arrived and my siblings glanced nervously at the overstuffed pictures of little boys in cowboy hats and little girls in daisy costumes.
I suppose the kiddie receptionist was at a loss over what to do with a family of 8 that had no young children. She decided to take the information of my youngest brother, since that was the closest she would ever come to a kiddie in my family. My brother must have been flustered by the abundance of naked children on the walls, because he spelled his name T-A-L-M-A-G, and proceeded to tell the lady that he was born in 1962. She said, "Oh, how old does that make you?" to which he replied, "5... I mean 8... I mean, I'm 11." We awaited our turn reticently, managing to peek at the props around the corners, such as mini fire engines, feather boas, and tricycles. Our first assignment was to choose a backdrop. The options were plentiful, ranging from the pretentious "Lord Nelson" (better known as gray with hideous purple splotches), "Winter Wonderland" (in case we wanted to fool people into thinking that our family abides in an interminable winter), and "Walk in Central Park." We chose brown, or what we chose to call brown - because I'm sure that it had some highfalutin name. Our photographer was very nice, although she did seem to think that my brother, Kimball, and I were married and that Talmage was our son. That left us all baffled and confused as we tried to do the math on how old I would have to be in order to have birthed a now 11-year-old boy. The photographer only brought out the multi-colored duster once to make us smile. Guess we were unusually good at sitting still and smiling. As I type, the repercussions of this experience sit primly on my bedside table, ensuring many laughs for years to come.