Say Cheese!

October is kind of a crazy month for our family. Both our birthdays fall in October. Less than 2 weeks apart, actually. The Boy's birthday is also in October, and it's smack dab in between our birthdays. So it gets a bit hectic trying to organize birthday celebrations. The Boy's is always relatively easy - it usually only requires food and letting him hang out with a bunch of his friends.

However, for us, every year Harry & I get to celebrate our birthdays by getting our vehicle registrations renewed. This year we were really lucky and got to get our licenses renewed too! They have seriously got to come up with a better way to get your picture taken. Standing with your back against a wall staring straight ahead while the person behind the counter says, "Okay, I'm going to take your picture now," and then makes you wait and wait and wait until you finally open your mouth to say something and you hear that telltale *click* doesn't exactly render magazine-quality photos*. But it is what it is, so everyone who drives a vehicle submits to the humiliation of getting a less-than-quality photo and life goes on.

All of my pictures look about the same year after year.

So imagine having to go through this ritual with your beloved spouse by your side (but out of camera range), who is "helping" you by shouting out "advice" like "Don't blink!"  or "Say 'cheese'!" or "SMILE!" and each time you involuntarily react and each time you hear that godawful *click* and you just know that picture was worse than the one before. Until you finally give up, because the License Dude is not amused that you are wasting that much time and resources (did you know your eyes have to be open for your license picture?), and accept the one where you look like an escaped mental patient because at least both your eyes were open and looking in the same direction.

Seoul has a slightly different experience...

BMV clerk- "Ready?"

Seoul-  "Sure!"

CLICK!

BMV clerk- "Okay lets try again..."

Seoul- "Hold on a..."

CLICK!

BMV clerk- "Sorry, my bad. One more time..."

Seoul- "Okay, I'm ready this time."

CLICK!

BMV clerk- "Your eyes were closed. Lets do one more..."

Seoul- "Huh?"

CLICK!

BMV clerk- "What the hell was that? Again..."

Seoul- "THUMP!"

CLICK!

BMV clerk- "What the?!? How did you fall? Okay, one last try..."

Seoul- "I feel good about this one."

CLICK!

BMV clerk- "............"

<blinks vacantly while sataring at the picture>

"Perfect! I'm going to lunch."

Next time I'm going by myself.

*That was quite possibly the longest run on sentence I've ever written. I'm sure it won't be the last.