Pictures

I am suddenly reminded of the time when I was working at the Haines City Herald. I was sent to take a photograph of some students at the high school, about 20 or 30 students who were involved in some program, I don't remember what it was. When we looked at the finished photos it was odd to note that one of the girls standing in the front row was holding her T-shirt stretched out almost as if pretending to be pregnant but of course she was only joking around. That was obvious even if not very funny. Oddly, only a few weeks or months before there had been some stories in the newspaper about the problem of teenage pregnancy in the school newspaper. I think we did use the photo because my editors did not nix the photo even though it was quite obvious. Maybe we should have scrapped it but we always were needing photos and pretty much used every photo we could get was used even if we had to go out of our way and drive all the way to the high school and back just to get one photo and a little cutline with info. I don't remember if there was even a story attached. If these students want to make some weird statement, it happens all the time, all these photos with people smirking and blinking and posing and whatever. If some teenage boys might have given her a bad time, although I am only guessing, then that is probably predictable. Teenage boys going through puberty can be terribly mean to girls, there is no question about that. And when you are talking about teenage boys who are redneck lowlifes living in Central Florida, then the odds are great that such a girl with such an attitude would be given a very hard time. I would not be surprised about that.