High School Photography And My Date Who Ghosted Me

Rest In Peace, high school photography work. Unfortunately, I think all my negatives and prints from my high school days are all lost forever so I won’t be able to show any of my work, but I promised the story of the date who ghosted me, so here we go!

When I was in high school, you could find me wearing my cheerleading uniform while playing my euphonium with the marching band during halftime at football games. My class schedule included poetry and creative writing, I played in honors band, and was on the soccer team for one season. I was briefly on the competitive cheerleading squad and participated in Honors Society and “Mustangs Committed to Service”. My interests were so scattered that it’s not really a surprise to me that I ended up in a photography class.

Black and white film photography was the main focus of the class and we had a darkroom to develop the film and photos ourselves. The very first photo I ever took for this class was one of those typical moody chain link fence shots with a narrow depth of field.

During my four semesters of photography, I would spend all of my free periods in the darkroom chasing that perfect print. We were limited by the amount of photo paper we were given each semester, so each print in the darkroom felt so important. I had my favorite enlarger station that I would huddle around for as much time as I possibly could (an enlarger is the piece of equipment in a darkroom that shines light through your photo negative onto special photo paper to create your print). All of this, in hindsight, was probably a coping mechanism for my social anxiety. The darkroom was a safe space where no one could stare at me or make fun of me or judge me and I was able to express who I was through this art.

I loved photography so much that I used it as a way to ask someone to a school dance! I honestly don’t even remember this guy’s name so we can call him John. John was an acquaintance that I thought was cute and wanted to ask to Turnabout (also known as Sadie Hawkins), the dance where the girls traditionally ask the guys to be their date. My creative idea for asking John was to create a film strip of architecture alphabet letters that spelled out T-U-R-N-A-B-O-U-T-? My plan was to have him come look at my really cool photos and he would be so excited to be my date once he realized what they said.

The day finally came, I took my photos and spent my free period developing the film. John was supposed to meet me during this free period to look at the photos. My nervous pacing went on for nearly an hour and a half while I waited for him to arrive. I thought he knew what was coming and was really dreading it, because he waited until there were 5 minutes left in the period to show up. He glanced at the photos for a second and said something like “Nice!” or “Cool!” or whatever teenage boys say when they’re trying to get out of a situation. I finally got him to actually look at the photos and practically spelled it out for him, and when he realized what it said, he said yes! I was thrilled and all doubts went out of my mind and we went our separate ways to our next classes.

Fast forward to the week of the dance and John is nowhere to be found. He wouldn’t answer my texts, I wasn’t running into him in the hallway at school, and I was getting worried that I might not have a date for the dance on Friday. On Thursday, I was really panicking and my memory gets a bit fuzzy here, but I think I called his house using the school directory and had to ask his mom what was up. Turns out he was sick (or pretending to be sick to get out of going to the dance with me) and wouldn’t be able to go. His mom showed up at my house on Friday before the dance and dropped off the corsage that he had intended to give me. Is it worse that John ghosted me before ghosting was even a thing, or that his mom had to break the news to me? I ended up asking a friend from a different school to be my last minute date and we had a wonderful time.

Part of the reason I started up photography again was because I missed the creative outlets that I had all throughout high school. I’m still feeling extremely rusty in the writing department, but this blog is slowly cracking through my scientist shell and is helping the creative side start to wake up again. I do still miss the entire film process and the safe space that the darkroom gave me, but getting out and photographing couples and families and babies is a brand new adventure that I’m so excited to continue.

And just for fun, here are some of my senior portraits that included my camera. You’re welcome.

Let’s create some memories.

Kim