By Jacqueline Miller of Boogers Abroad
Making a decision that inadvertently destroyed her social life, Anna Jacobs, a nurse and mother of twins from Ann Arbor, Mich., boycotted back-to-school photos this year.
Jacobs noted that getting her sons out the door in time to catch the school bus is hard enough as it is. When the teens weren’t eager participants, she decided with little hesitation to hit the pause button on this time-honored tradition.
“My boys are 14 now, and they said ‘No way’ to photos on the first day of school,” Jacobs explained. “I was like, ‘Fine by me.’”
Hours later when she took her lunch break at work, she scrolled through Facebook and saw screen after screen full of the first-day photos her friends posted, showing off their smiling kids in new shoes and fresh haircuts.
“Aww!” Jacobs commented when asked about these photos. However, she didn’t bother to “Like” a single one of them on the popular social media site.
“Are you serious? That’s like 200 photos!” Jacobs exclaimed. “I’m not going to waste my entire lunch break liking photos.”
However, the women in her social circle didn’t appreciate Jacobs’ cavalier attitude.
“She said my first-day-of-school sign was ‘Cute’ when she saw me painting it,” Jacobs’ outraged neighbor, Sharon Michaelson, noted. “But then she didn’t have the courtesy to leave a comment or even bother to like the Facebook photo of my kids holding the sign! So rude!”
As a result, Michaelson plans to exclude her neighbor from the next margarita night.
PTA President Julia Smith also noted her disappointment over the family’s absence from the first-day-of-school Facebook frenzy. “Oh, it definitely raised some eyebrows around school!” Smith added that as a result, it was “doubtful” anyone would save the woman a spot at Saturday yoga.
However, despite Jacob’s social media faux-pas, Smith said she would still ask her to volunteer for the fall school fundraiser but would demote her to clean-up crew instead of the much-coveted bake-sale booth she managed last year.
*****
About the Author
Jacqueline Miller is the lone female in a house full of guys. She travels freakishly light and can balance two kids on her Dutch bicycle. Her recent articles appear in Grown & Flown and Her View From Home, and she’s working on a book about her three years in the Netherlands. If you enjoyed this, you can follow her at www.boogersabroad.com and https://www.facebook.com/boogersabroad.