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ONE FRAME FRIDAY
confidence
this is a photo of me, a little friendly, feisty, blonde, drama queen.
“believe in yourself and there will come a day when others will have no choice but to believe with you.”
i have to tell you a story i promised myself i would never ever bring up in my adult life, but it feels only right to share this little secret with you. now, you must promise to not hold it against me or to mock me when we meet again… okay? looking back if you asked to describe my lovely personality through my teens, it might not have been out of line to call me a drama queen. no, not the catty kind that loves to whisper, but the one who will blow things out of proportion. “mom, i can not drive this delta ’88, people call it the couch on wheels.” man, i miss that old car and its plush seats… they just don’t make things the way they used to. some would say i was destined for theatre but i totally beg to differ.
when ever my sister and i bicker about how is cooler than the other, she always holds it over my head that this one time we were in a play together, it was beauty and the beast. needless to say, i was the beauty and she was cast as gargoyle #3. i think i maybe would have been luckier to play a silent gargoyle, but i didn’t know that at the time… looking back i blush even thinking that i tried out to be the main character and wonder how deaf the producers must have been to cast me in a role that required singing. somehow, i got up on that stage in this hideous costume and far too much blush and sang my little heart out. i wasn’t fully aware of what the words “tone deaf” meant at the time, so i looked into those bright lights and pretended i was mariah carey, except i was singing some weird song about a beast… my mother just told me today that she was a little perplexed when i told her i got the lead, thank goodness she didn’t squash my “princess” dreams, but dang, mom, you could have told me i couldn’t sing! years later, i refuse to sing in front of anyone other than my dogs and the man who played at the piano bar in jamaica, the latter can be blamed on a few bahama mama’s and the song “friends in low places.”
there is something about me that has always believed “fake it ’til you make it.” and to be entirely honest, i have had to fake it on more than one occasion in my life, but i can’t for a second say i regret it. i giggle with some of my first clients when i think of how our meetings went, i would talk like i had been a photographer since i walked out of the womb and then would shyly tell that it was my first year of photography only when they asked. i have been known to speak my way out of a few speeding tickets, masterfully complete a tough interview, and make new friends at ferocious speeds. maybe i can thank that 14 year old girl who sat on that stage and owned the part of beauty for that one… i can tell you this, i am oh so thankful i never went into theatre. i am also thankful that a little piece of that confidence stuck with me years later… i am oh so sure my parents are thankful that the teenage drama queen grew up into a halfway decent human. i am sure my clients probably love the fact that i exude the confidence necessary to make their wedding day moments happen, now i have the experience to back it up too.
this isn’t something that just happened overnight, i was never ever the shy one. when you put my in awkward conversations, i just talk… a million miles a minute. i should have seen it coming when i hear stories about my not-so-shy personality as a little tyke. growing up in the frigid state of minnesota, i lived at the ice rink. my mom laughs as she tells me about a tiny little girl who would skate around in her unicorn double bladed ice skates at the rink for hours on end. this little blonde would approach the high schoolers with a little phase i have come to know and love, apparently it worked because i made a lot of friends that year…
“hi, my name is jenna. J-E-N-N-A, wanna be my friend?”
well, do you?
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