The Christmas Photo

I sat down in one of those plastic waiting seats at Sears Portrait Studio. It was near the end of October so far as I could figure judging by my photo waiting compatriots - a woman in her thirties, and her four kids. She was trying to herd her droves of children into costumes with the promise of an ice cream cone or a Beanie Baby from Hallmark, or so I assumed. I try not to listen to families; they make me sad. I’ve always wanted one, but at thirty-nine going to the bar every Friday and Saturday night. I’ve had a few close calls, but they were just that – close.

At thirty I had stopped paying attention to the date. The leaves had changed color and NBC's fall lineup was finally hitting its stride, that's all I knew, which was plenty. It meant that soon the marigolds would be gone, and I'd stop taking walks in the park. It meant that they'd turn on the heat lamps at the train stations. It meant that you could buy Christmas cards with your picture on them at Sears Portrait Studio for a discounted pre-holiday rate.

I had a few done up every year, and every year I though that the next I'd go somewhere that could afford the apostrophe after "Sears," showing possession, but when it came to it, there were no "Sears' Portrait Studios" with such a deal. So, there I sat, next to the woman with too many kids to know what to do with.

They called my name, “Stephen,” and I stood up with a squeak, Christmas-crimson turtleneck clashing horribly with fall’s burnt orange. I thought about how long it had been since my last photograph – a year almost to the day, I’d wager. I thought about how a year’s worth of faces was lost - those silly replacement glasses that I had to wear when I slept on the old ones, that one time I had laughed so hard at Jerry’s joke about the peanut butter. I thought about how I would never remember thirty-nine, except for that turtleneck against the off-season backdrop, and how I had blinked in the picture too.