People used to say things to me like, You look like a prepubescent boy…Oh my gawd, you look sooo much better now , Wow, your hair is uuuuugly! , andYikes - those eyebrows look like hairy catepillars! I’d get these comments from people who happened to glance at my Virginia Tech student ID card. Yes, the comments were frequent and varied, and gauranteed to produce a cruel chuckle from an offending spectator.

I think it got really bad when people would beg to see my ID in social situations - basically, so everyone could have a chortle over my funky freshman pic. In essence, my card had become a sort of party favor. When the jokes died down it was time to produce the plastic. Like magic, the room would come alive with laughter. Of course this happened at the expense of my dignity, but hey who needs pride and self - esteem anyway?

Seriously, I was admittedly thinner in 1999, and I wore braces. My eyebrows did in fact look like catepillars, and I had this chunky short hair cut. I wasn’t at all glamorous, (as I am now dahlings) but I wasn’t as hideous as my ID pic. There must’ve been some sort of secret conspiracy against me, in which the evil photographer, in an effort to produce the dorkiest image in the world, manipulated every possible element resulting in the infamous pic.

I have hated this ID since the day I recieved it. And today it was disposed of. Today I have a new ID, one in which I am decidedly not garish or prepubescent-like. My friend down at the ID office saw the offensive freshman card and immediately exclaimed , “you look like you’re ten years old!” She then directed me to immediately proceed to the booth next door to get a new ID taken. I asked was she sure? And she said “to the chair, right now!”

Wow, so in 2002 I am a whole new me. A whole new perfectly-respectable-looking me. To those who will mourn the loss of little-boy-Hänni, my condolences….

Posted in VT