Oh. Okay, Jess. Are you ready? Oh yeah, I am. I just got a fix. Hey, I said I wasn't ready. DUDE! Oh my. School photos. Following the trend of sharing too much information about my most embarrassing moments with thousands of people, because don't we just love that? Here is another traumatic experience for you to be entertained by. And what an experience this was. Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Recently, I launched a merch store and guess what? I've added more items. All the previous products are on sale now and so are the new ones, including an ugly Christmas sweater to get you ready for the festive season, as well as some smaller items like socks and a face mask. Bye now! Buffy Quick. This sale only lasts for one week as a big black Friday event. So be sure to check it out. Link is below. This was an annul shindig where a crew of strangers would infiltrate our school and take photos of all the children. As weird as this sounds, I'm sure it's a common practice in most schools around the world. For my school, we had to pay for our photos, which makes sense. But what doesn't make sense is that getting your picture taken wasn't optional. How was that fair? I'm going to split this topic into two separate videos, primary school and high school. Part two will be coming out very soon and if it's already out by the time you're watching this, the link will be below. Now let's go talk about primary school. When I was a lot younger, the morning of school photo day tended to go like this. So waste time eating breakfast. I need to do your hair extra nice today. Stop watching Disney Channel and brush your teeth. We need to leave soon. Hey mom, I spat toothpaste on my uniform. What? After all that, my bros and I got kicked out of the car at the school gates and of course, I was thrown in front of a camera right away before my hair or uniform got affected by daily school life. During my year of kindergarten, A.K.A. my first year of school ever, the photography crew must have been like, see how the sun is blurring down on the steaming 45 degrees Celsius day right in that specific patch of grass? Let's set up that group photograph right there. This led to my first ever school photo experience, having a horrific outcome. The sun was so blinding that I could barely look up at the photographers, so my head was tilted downwards, away from the sun's harmful rays. But of course, you need to make eye contact with the camera for a photo, right? Right! I definitely didn't forget to do that. With my head tilted down, I persevered through the searing light and locked eyes with the camera. I look possessed by demons. Yeah, I wish I could say my photos got better from there. Nope, it was a downward slope. More about the slope later, my eyes were already melting from the sun itself, but when staring this camera down, I just had to be hit with a bright camera flash as well, summoning the demon spirit to overtake my body. What a mess! Sign out for any photographers out there who might know more about this than me? Why were they using a flash in such bright, naturally lit conditions? I have a feeling that these people just used as much equipment as possible to convince a school that they're professional, enough to be hired. But I could be wrong, so let me know. What I will say though is that the following year, the group photos were taken indoors. I'm wondering what that is! I don't know if anyone else did this, but every single year for photo day, I had the same hairstyle. My hair would be straightened with a small plat on the left every time. If I was feeling particularly quirky one year, I might have put the plat on the right side instead. That's how the cool kids do it! My school had a strict uniform for the most part, and photo day was always happening during summer. The summer variation of this uniform was very simple. Everybody wore the same thing. It worked. But guess what? So our team has been thinking, let's just do photos in the winter for no reason at all. Deal! It took forever to get this group photo taken. The female winter uniform could have a lot of subtle and not so subtle differences. A white shirt is mandatory, but you could wear a long skirt or pants, or a vest over the shirt, or even a little tie. What is this? Since all the girls would rock up in different uniforms, it proved very difficult for the photographers to make the photo look symmetrical. Before, they were taken to consideration, boys and girls, the tall people and the short people. And that was it! This time, they were more or less playing a jigsaw puzzle with misbehaving juvenile set at the highest difficulty. Because this process took so long, the last scheduled class for the day would literally have no more than 10 minutes for photos before their buses would arrive to take them home. By this point in the day, people's nicely done hair became scraggly messes, including mine. I mentioned this in a previous video. Some of you guys might remember, but when I was younger, I had a very difficult time forcing a smile for cameras. Oh my god. My idea of a smile was stretching my mouth on either side. That's it! Remember that slope I mentioned earlier? That's exactly what happened to my mouth when I did this. How was this? A smile! The photographers would take the photo, look at it, and then make me take it again. I had no way of changing this face, and I could tell they were getting frustrated. Okay, smile. Uh, okay, let's try that again, but put more happiness into it. Okay? God. Okay. Imagine you just won a million dollars. Woo! The worst part of all of this is that my mom got these photos after they were printed and sent out, and then redistributed them throughout our whole family. Far away in another part of the country, in the living room of my grandparents' house. My favorite chair. It still makes me cringe to this very day. Thank god my smile has improved since then. One year, the photographers were desperate to get better photos. They had a tripod set up, and on top of it was a stuffed monkey. The photographer would try way too hard to try and make this a fun element to the photo taking process, making each kid say, monkeys. They also did this for the big group. Okay guys, big white smiles. Say monkeys. Monkey. Okay, one more time guys. Monkey. Now that brings a tear to my eye. Let's say it one more time. Monkey. That was... Beautiful. Anyway, see me here? I always had to sit in the front row due to being a very small human. This year, however, I was moved away from this area. Joy filled my little heart. I felt 10 feet tall. I was growing. I later found out that this was because of my uniform, not my height. Let me have my moment. That's all I can remember from this early stage of my school life, so I'm going to leave it there. However, part two about high school photos is coming. You guys are not ready for that. Huge thank you obviously goes down to Alex for playing the role of the photographer. This was a super fun collab, and I love what she was able to do with the character. Her links are on screen and in the description below, go support her if you're not already.