August 4, 2007

Escrima Training Required

I’m not dead. I didn’t forget how to write. It’s just been an absolutely crazy week. It’s good I watched the Human Weapon episode about escrima (stick fighting), because I needed those skills in order to fight off an aggressive picture sales person this week.

My church puts together a picture directory every ten years or so, maybe longer, because the last one I was featured in shows a BBM with one serious spiral perm. Anyway, we got our pictures taken and then suffered through the gradual wearing down of the blockade protecting our funds.

You go, get your pictures taken, and then you choose your family picture for the directory. You get a free 8 x 10 of your chosen family portrait, and then they use their picture software to show you how you can have a billboard of pictures put into one of their beautiful truck-sized frames in case you have that kind of space on your wall. There was no talk of costs. I hate when people aren’t up front about things like that.

We politely sat and watched her maneuver the pictures around into various displays that became smaller and smaller as we eliminated unnatural looking picture after unnatural looking picture. Despite the fact that my neck is getting better, I looked wooden in several of the shots after being told to look to the left, tilt to the right, rotate the chin. I started feeling like I should have brought my chiropractor along with me. We ended up with about three that we liked, all of the girls. Big surprise there.

Despite the fact that I told them my Mom has her own framing business, they continued to try to sell us on the frames. I tried to stay nice about it. We were in my church after all, but eventually it came down a very frustrated this:

"How much do individual prints cost?"

She looked disappointed, picked up a binder, and started secretly looking through it. That kind of behavior bothers me deeply.

Mr. BBM and I both grew impatient as she showed us package after ridiculously priced package that included hideous frames, after I explicitly told her we were not interested in buying any frames.

"Yeah, that’s not going to work," I told her. We finally got her to open up the secret book of prices when she realized she was getting NO WHERE with us. We ended up with three pictures and a couple wallets of the kids.

We said no to the shot of Mr. BBM and I alone. The photographer had us so tangled up with our legs and arms that we began to feel like pretzels gone wrong. I also had a mad hatter’s grin on my face as the photographer had just told us to say "more KIDS" in place of the standard "cheese." I cracked up laughing at that insane thought because right now, I’m in kids up to my eyebrows. We’re holding off on adding any more to the mix for at least the foreseeable future and maybe eternity.

Once we had the kids loaded into the car, Mr. BBM said to me outside the car, "You know, I usually like to have dinner and wine before I get. . ."

I’ll let you fill in the blank.