I'm Not Special

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I'm not special. I smile and laugh while saying, "I'm going to get you, I'm going to get you!" I take my fluffy duster and tickle the foot of the kid in front of me. I jump behind the camera quickly and hit my shutter. I've learned to keep the button hidden behind my back. I successfully capture a picture of the child smiling.

I always loved taking pictures. When I was young anytime my friends were over, I wanted to do a photo shoot. My grandad built me backdrops from wood and construction paper, I had a black, white, navy blue, clouds, and rainbow backgrounds to pose people on. If I didn't have friends to take pictures of, I'd model my dolls, setting up fashion scenes. I continued this far past the age of playing with dolls. To this day when I go home, I pull out my Bratz doll collection, I'm very proud of it.

One night around age 12 I went outside with the family camera, digital cameras were expensive back then, so we only had a family one. Also, cellphones were not really a thing, and if you had one it probably didn't take pictures. There was no social media to post to. I also brought a tube of red lip gloss outside with me and painted flowers in the garden with the red lip color. I took pictures, adjusting the flash. The last pictures I took, I put the lip gloss across my toes, as if they had been cut. I wanted to call the collection, 'A bloody walk in the garden'.

I went straight up to the computer and printed three photos, two bloody flowers and one of my feet. I didn't have editing software, that wasn't a common thing to have back then. Because of that I had learned to crop in camera. Whatever lighting I achieve was what I got, no photoshop to fix it.

I remember proudly showing my mom the three pictures. I wonder how weirded out she was. Like I said, I was only 12, maybe even 11. I think that's the first time my parents realized I had a talent with the camera. I mean what kid comes up with this kind of stuff?

I got three picture frames; I don't remember how. I used my mom's craft paints to paint the brown frames blood red. I was impressive and disturbing all at the same time. What can I say, I had a vision. I was into gore, no reference, it just interested me. When I was older, I remember getting my hands on a "Saw" DVD. I loved it, to this day it still ranks in my top ten favorite movies.

Now why am I tickling kids toes? Because getting paid to take pictures is a hard gig, especially as a consistent job. People want pictures of their kids and families, so that's what I did. I became a portrait photographer. Back then in malls there were portraits studios and that's where you could find me. 19 years old and fresh out of school.

Let me tell you about kids, they are gross! Parents would get their children all clean and dressed up, only for five minutes after the photoshoot to be covered in chocolate or juice. They are magnets for germs. I spent my first year at that job with a constant cold.

Let me tell you about moms, they are tired and trying damn hard to get things done! I saw new moms, in awe over their newborn babies. Amazed by how tiny their feet were and the cute noises they made while they slept. I saw moms with two-year-old's, yelling at their energizer bunny kid to, "sit down, don't throw that!" I saw moms with 4 kids under the age of 7, they just wanted to get through the day without anyone dying.

I'm not a mom and I don't have kids, so this is all just my opinion. But there was no better birth control than dealing with them day in and day out.

I never liked kids; I was the youngest in my family with only one older sister. When I first started working at the portrait studio it was like being employed at a zoo. These kids where like strange birds or monkeys. I didn't know how to hold them; I didn't know how to talk to them.

When I first started parents would come in and say, "My son is two." I would reply with, "Does it walk yet?" I didn't know at what age kids learned to walk, just like I don't know when baby birds learn to fly, it was a mystery. I was astonished to find out babies can't sit up by themselves until around nine months old. How do they survive?

I struggled with kids, not just babies. I didn't know what a three-year-old was into, Barney, SpongeBob? Once a dad said his son played soccer, so I asked the boy, "What position do you play?" only for the dad to tell me he was too young for positions. "Oh, do they all just try to kick the ball?" I was clueless.

The kids didn't like me much either. Whenever someone handed me their baby and it started crying, I would think, this baby is a great judge of character! Once I was sitting talking to a kid before a shoot, she was playing with one of our toys, a black and white stuffed rabbit. I asked her, "What should we name the rabbit, maybe Oreo because of its colors?" She thought for a moment only to decide the rabbits should be named Michael Jackson. The things kids say.

I found I did best with slightly older girls, I could pose them cute with flowers around them. I was taught to call girls princess and boys buddy. Something I don't think you could do today, but it helped me. "Okay princess stand here." "Big smiles buddy." Then I found the duster!

Yes, a duster, like what you use to dust. This duster was special, because I didn't clean with it, I tickled children with it. And yes, I am aware of how weird that sounds. But it worked almost every time, getting me photos of happy laughing monsters, I mean children. I soon mastered studio photography, and even if I didn't like the kids, I enjoyed the job. I liked to have an end product, "Look what I created!" ‍‍That's when my life started, 19 years old, in a mall, behind a camera.

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