Summary

The article entitiled 'Senior Picture Day' was a realistic short story written by Michelle Serros. It tells us a story about a girl's experience that feels not so confident with her looks, especialy her nose. She started to develop a habbit of squeezing her nose to make it look less 'Indian'. Ever since she was in seventh grade, she would squeeze her nose everytime she has a chance, for example while she was brushing her teeth and when she was waiting for breakfast. Also in seventh grade, she met a girl named Terri and they eventualy became best friends. While waiting for Terri's swimming pool to be built, Terri invited her to her house to play on her dad's Citizen Band. Although her father don't like seeing her daughter play with the CB, Terri was actually pretty good at making this sounds better and was making new friends. They met a boy 'Lightning Bolt' and Terri started flirting with him, but was interupted by her dad's complaint. The next day she accidentaly overheard Terri talking bad about her with Lightning Bolt when he asked about her. She heard Terri saying that she has a flat chest, skinny, and what really iinsulted her was Terri joked about her nose and said it was 'Indian'. After that incident, the squeezing began and she never spoke to Terri again. Four years have passed and the squeezing has made an impact to her appearance during senior picture day.

Personal response

I feel that this story taught me a lot about the troubles of growing up as a teenager. Other people's opinion matter the most and can turn our confidence level from 100 to 0 in a second. Suddenly, everything can be wrong with your body just because some other person thinks its wrong. The writer also tells the two characters' true colors in this story. One shy, sensitive, insecure girl and this one confident, charismatic girl. She's basically everything the shy girl wants to be like. But, not long after they became friends, the shy girl realized her friends backstabbing attitude when they met a boy on CB. Unfortunately, she has to learn it the hard way. Everytime I read the part when her freind told the boy that her nose was too 'Indian' I fell like jumping into the story and give her a big hug and say 'you're beautiful' and I think everyone should feel confident with their bodies regardless of what other people think.