The photo, "Kristy the Human Can Opener," has for years hung over the arch doorway in my parents' living room, smiling down on all who enter in its crooked, buck-toothed greatness.

I was in second grade. My mom had carefully rolled curlers in my long red hair the night before and, in the picture, the locks hung over my shoulders like those of a southern Belle. I wore a purple dress trimmed with purple ribbon. I had rosy cheeks, a freckled nose and -

Two unfortunate teeth that still send my dad into fits of slap-you-on-the-back laughter.

By picture day that year, I had lost only two baby teeth - which also happened to be my two front teeth. The left had already grown to its full adult size, sitting in my face like a lighthouse on a rocky coastline, a beacon to ships on a stormy sea.

The right tooth had grown just about a quarter of the way in. When I brought the pictures home, Dad asked if I could open his can of beans.

It wasn't even the worst of my school portraits.

In fourth grade, I feathered my hair like the guys on Miami Vice. A single earring brushed my shoulder, the same earring I found in the parking lot that morning. (Gross, I know. But in fourth grade in the 1980s, was there anything cooler?)

In fifth grade, I cut my hair short and then got a perm. Talk about a hard-knock life: I lived a whole year as Little Orphan Annie without the Daddy Warbucks bank roll.

And in seventh grade? With the wonders of Aqua Net and a ratting comb, I managed to defy the laws of gravity and common sense, molding a red rat-ball that stuck straight up in the middle of my forehead. My glasses had gotten so large, they extended well below the tip of my nose.

I don't show that picture to anyone.

Now, as I'm filling out picture order forms for my own children, I wonder: How can I save them from my woeful picture-day fate? Picateers, Inc., an online school portrait company, offers several common sense suggestions:

1. Wear wear solid, medium colors. Colors too bright, too dark, too light or too patterned don't reproduce well or may require lighting adjustments photographers don't have time to make.

2. Kids should take off their glasses if they don't have anti-reflective coating.

3. And, "To get a great smile, remind your child to think of something really silly when the photographer asks him/her to smile, such as picturing the photographer with a big ice cream cone on her head. Older kids can come up with their own outrageous images."

OK. Thanks Picateers.

Now back to Planet Reality.

I'll concentrate on getting 6-year-old Sammy out the door without half his breakfast on his shirt, you worry about the lighting, OK? If 12-year-old Taylor just remembers his glasses, I'll be more than happy. And if I think my kids need something to smile at, I'll just show them one of my school pictures.

The truth is, school portraits were made to be horrible. They document all of the awkward moments of our childhood and, you know what, those moments sometimes need to be documented. It keeps us in our place.

Take Taylor for an example. As a seventh-grader, he's now sporting the first fuzzies of an adolescent mustache. It's thin, it's white and it glimmers if the light hits it at just the right angle.

While I hate to admit it, I'm curious to see how his mustache comes out when he brings home his school pictures. If it doesn't show up, Taylor will likely have a pretty respectable portrait to sign and pass out to friends: "2014 kix butt! Luv Taylor"

But, if the light catches it at that magical angle, glinting in all its blond magnificence, Taylor will learn his own lesson in humility.

And I'll have a picture to show his future girlfriends.

Reach features editor Kristy Gray at (307) 266-0586 or kristy.gray@trib.com