Selfies Are Not in My Skill Set

I Cannot Take a Decent Selfie if My Life Depended on It

I can type 60+ words per minute and use an adding machine without looking at the keys. I do jigsaw puzzles, sew and embroider. Fluting a piecrust or stuffing a cannoli is well within my skill set. But I cannot take a decent selfie to save my life. Here’s why:

A Dearth of Dexterity

First, I lack the dexterity to operate my cell phone with one hand. I cannot simultaneously hold my phone, eyeball the camera lens, pose and press the button. My selfies turn out blurry and off-center. My nose and chin are out of proportion and my smile is more like a gargoyle’s grimace.

The family tells me it’s because my cell phone doesn’t have a good camera. Admittedly, my phone is about four generations behind today’s latest and greatest supersized models. Mine is still small enough to fit in a pocket or hold discreetly to check my mail during a movie or the Sunday sermon. (Not that I do that. Ever.) More likely the poor quality of my selfie is because my arms are too short to get an optimal distance from my face. Some things just shouldn’t be viewed in full zoom.

It’s About the Stories

Second, I believe photographs should tell stories. When I take a picture of you, I’m capturing a story about you. If I’m in the photo with you, we freeze a moment in time we have shared together. If you look through my photo albums, you’ll see the people and things I care about, the stories I most want to remember.

I love my friends who are comfortable and secure enough to take lots of goofy selfies for no reason and post them for the world to see. I’m too insecure (and probably repressed) for random, goofy close-ups. So if you see a selfie of me showing half my face, eyes rolled, and lips puckered like a fish, you know I’ve just sucked a lemon or swallowed a bug. That will be my story.

Practice Makes Perfect, If You Do It

Third, I don’t practice. I’m personally uncomfortable being the subject of a selfie, so I don’t take them. As the self-appointed historian of the family, I have spent years behind my camera cajoling unwilling children to stand still, look at me, and smile. In a way, I’ve actually contributed to the development of the current selfie-obsessed generation. I immortalized birthdays, holidays, visits to grandma, cartwheels through the sprinkler and enough kids-with-dogs pictures to wallpaper my house. Wielding the camera meant I could remain behind it. Today’s selfie culture eliminates the “Missing Mama” phenomenon prevalent in the family albums. But I’m not ready to be forced into the limelight just because the technology is there.

Selfies Aren’t New

For the record, selfies are not new. In the “olden days,” we’d turn the camera around, line up the lens as best we could and click the shutter. Then we would ship our film canisters off for developing. A week later the pictures came back and we finally saw our blind shot in print. Sometimes we cut off the top of Uncle Bob’s head or the camera angle gave Daddy a double chin. As awful as they were, some of the more hilarious blooper shots hold pride of place in the family scrapbook. And honestly, many of them were better compositions than the ones Grandma took.

That reminds me, as unskilled as I am at selfies, Grandma with a smartphone is worse. But that’s a column for another day.

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