Christmas Cards

I love and I mean love getting Christmas cards. I want to see your kids smiling, in knickers, with bows. Show me taffeta, mall Santa. Spread your glitter and cheer, beckon me closer with your tiny print and your gay suggestions for frivolity in the new year.
I LOVE Christmas Cards.
I love Christmas letters. No one does them anymore but good lord how I love the chatty, newsy letters with tidbits about the kids, the jobs.
I thrill to the handwritten "ho ho ho" on the back.
I take no exception to the "b" list cards, the you sent to me because I sent to you. I choose instead to assume you sent yours out late this year.
I adore the Christmas card.
Adore it.

except...

Except the beach vacation photo.
No no, not the one where you all had the forethought wear Santa hats on the dunes of some gorgeous locale. That's clever. Appropriate. I mean the candid one. The one where the best picture you could find of your prepubescent child was them partially unclothed.

I have a friend who yearly uses the shot of her boys lounging on the beach.
Yearly.
and I mean EVERY year.
And inevitably, every year as I look at those shining boy faces I dont think "Oh my, how they've grown" or "Oh my, so cute"
Instead I think, just for a fleeting second, uncomfortably, that it all looks faintly NAMBLA.
Id say something but then who's the weirdo.