Scene - Blogs - Meth dealers Cabbage Patch Kids and Lance Bass granddad

Meth dealers, Cabbage Patch Kids and Lance Bass' granddad
Published: 1/30/2012 7:30 AM
Last Modified: 1/27/2012 5:05 PM

This is me and Steph on Christmas Eve 1987. My short shorts are Coca-Cola, too -- and terrycloth.

I loathe being photographed.

I'm sure there were times throughout my prepubescent childhood when I might've been happy to pose for the camera. Such was NOT the case in
the photo I shared with y'all in my very first blog more than 4 years ago. Trying to make me smile for the photo, a photographer punched me in the nose with a Mickey Mouse doll. The resulting picture was snapped immediately before I started screaming.

Happier moments -- specifically, those before I realized I was a fat kid and didn't suck in my gut -- were snap-shot at Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, Fourth of July, family barbecues and that time I refused to sing Eddy Grant's "Electric Avenue" in front of the family while my brother and cousins played guitars with brooms. Good times, all.

But then I got glasses in fourth grade, and most of my school pictures look either cross-eyed or like someone drew a face on a thumb, then smushed a brown matte of hair on top. Because I had a cracked front tooth from that time I ran into a parked car, I rarely smiled -- it was more of a dimpled smirk of feigned satisfaction.

So stop what you're doing and kindly imagine my non-delight at being told by the Powers That Be that I had to take a new mug shot. I like my current one! It's 2+ years old, I'm 80 pounds lighter, and my hair is short and conservative. These days, I look like an older, sad version of a Campbell's Soup kid.

The Powers That Be didn't care. I had to take a new photo Friday. Naturally, I woke up with a zit below my mouth, then shaved -- that was bloody. Fortunately, a friend loaned me some concealor at work so it wouldn't look quite so violent in my new photo, which will run all stinking year, or until I'm fired for listening to Dannii Minogue's "Put the Needle On It" with my headphones on, then accidentally singing along out loud. At least, that's a fear of mine.

So add today's unpleasantness to the following photographic memories I wish I could repress:

5. Right before having my senior portraits shot, Dad took me to our usual barber shop so one of the female stylists could, as her title implied, style my hair. I'm sure it looked better than how I usually coiffed it, but it still looked like an evangelical bouffant. Dad gave me $1 to tip her and suggested I tell her to "go buy a Coke." After that, it was on to Bass Studios, owned by the wonderful Jimmy Bass, who is the grandfather of Lance Bass of NSync. Just FYI. Anyhoo, Mr. Jimmy didn't have a lot to work with where I was concerned, and he instructed me to smile -- mistake. I took off my glasses, which made my eyes appear crossed. That, plus the chipped front tooth, tux jacket and bowtie made me look like a really classy meth dealer.

4. In fifth grade, when I was still wearing Husky jeans, I was ascending the steps to my new classroom at St. John's Day School. I've always walked funny, so I'm sure anyone standing behind me had an unpleasant view -- including the photographer from the Laurel Leader-Call, who snapped a shot of me for the front freakin' page of the paper. That was my first appearance in a newspaper.

3. Fifth grade was decidedly tragic, as there is photographic proof of the Cabbage Patch Kid birthday party my cousin Stephanie and I had for our adopted, plastic-headed children on Thanksgiving at Mamaw and Papaw Wright's house. All the photos feature me and Steph mugging happily, sitting around a card table with our "kids," while the older cousins and our parents stood around, rolling their eyes or frowning. Good Lord, my parents were indulgent.

2. Following fifth grade, Mamaw and Papaw Wright took Steph and I to the Miss'ippi coast, where we spent a weekend being spoiled, both on the beach and at the hotel pool. When we returned, Mamaw made each of us a photo album of the trip, complete with shots of me posed like Carmen Miranda a couple of times. Oh, and I wasn't wearing a shirt.

1. The summer between 10th and 11th grades, I got a bowl haircut -- at the same barber shop as my senior portrait -- just like my brother's. Dad told us that, when he was growing up, that's how kids with lice had their hair cut. Or something unpleasant like that. Anyway, I'm not trying to be tacky or perverted, but we looked like penises. So, of course, there's a photo somewhere of us standing in Mamaw Walters' front yard -- me in my Generra Hypercolor shirt, which was blue when it was cool and pink under my armpits and across my stomach. Pretty.

Surely, there's a lesson I can pass along here, but I'm suddenly too humiliated to find it. So good luck with that.

Peace, love and plastic-headed children ... XOXO

Reader Comments

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Fred (last year)

Jason, that was a nice share. Thanks.

futureview (last year)

Jason...you still are a cutie petewtie!

Double D

220668 (last year)

Actually, I'm just wondering if you're as awful looking as you describe - or perhaps your mirror is distorted.

PrayingHam (last year)

Can't wait for the new pic.

No photoshopping!

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Living Wright

While other kids were watching "The Smurfs," Scene Writer Jason Ashley Wright was tuned in to "Style with Elsa Klensch." By fourth grade, he knew he wanted to write, and spent almost three years publishing a weekly teen-oriented magazine, Teen-Zine -- circulation: 2. After earning a degree in journalism from the University of Southern Mississippi, he became the medical reporter and teen board coordinator for the Hattiesburg (Miss.) American, a Gannett newspaper. Eight months later, with visions of Elsa dancing in his head, he applied for the fashion writer position at the Tulsa World, where he began working on Aug. 3, 1998. He is now a general assignment reporter for Scene.

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