What has this world come to?

Lately, I've been working occasionally as a portrait photographer at some local elementary schools. For the simple reason that it allows me to pay my bills, besides allowing me to work as a photographer. It has its good points and its bad points as an occupation.

The good points, I've touched on from time to time in past posts. They include not having an agenda besides having fun. No deceitful natures in the kids I've worked with. Besides, who can ignore the smiles on their faces? Honestly, the ones I find the best to work with are the ones I have to coax into giving me a smile. I get to spend more time with them.

As for the bad points, well, I often joke about being around these kids as being an effective form of birth control. You can't deny that the volume kids often work with is either loud or "is that a jet engine flying by" loud. And I can't forget to mention their short attention spans. My dog has a longer attention span and he only needs to be corrected every thirty seconds. Then there are the ones who have no intention of making it easy to have their pictures taken, so they start fooling around and ignoring what you ask them to do.

However, the worse point about working with kids is what our society has done to all of us. One of the cardinal rules when working with kids in these schools is the "no touch" policy. There should be little or no physical contact with the children I photograph. I can't begin to describe the challenge it is to verbally tell a five year old how to position themselves for a picture.

I have been told stories about photographers being removed from schools in handcuffs for allegations of inappropriate physical contact. Besides the humiliation, they were let go by the companies they worked for. It didn't matter that they were innocent. (I was also told that the accusers later recanted on their stories).

So, imagine my reaction when I had a five year old child, whose picture I had just taken, come up to me and gave me a hug. If I had told this to you, without the above information, you'd probably say something like, "Aww, how cute!" Well, my reaction was more like, "Oh no! I'm not supposed to touch you!"

What is wrong with our society that my reaction isn't one full of joy and wonder at having a young child come up to give me a hug? Instead, my reaction was more akin to horror. Fortunately, my hesitation wasn't noticed by the kid as I patted him on his back. Or at least I hope he didn't notice that hesitation.

Perhaps we should start making those inflatable bubbles to put everyone into now instead of waiting until society puts us there. I'm already damaged and I didn't do anything wrong.