“Hello, I need a passport photo, please?” I smile at the lady with the Walgreens nametag and the permafrown.

She pulls down a white screen. “Stand in front of this.”

I obey, smoothing my bangs and wondering if I should have come on a day when my hair was washed, glossed, straightened, and curled.

“Do you need this photo for a real passport?” she asks.

“Er, yes.” I’m not sure why else I would spend money on a “passport” photo.

“Then you can’t smile in the picture.”

I laugh, because she must be joking, and because I’m easy to laugh and, for that matter, easy to smile. 

She, who is clearly the opposite, cracks neither laugh nor smile nor even smirk nor grin. “I’m dead serious.”

“But I have to use this thing for the next ten years. They’ll never let me back in the country.”

“Are you ready?” she says, deadpan, ignoring my flair for humor.

I try to eliminate all traces of hilarity from my face, which only makes me laugh over the hilarity of it all. “Can you just count to three, and then I’ll not smile on three?”

“No. Because people naturally smile on three. Are you ready?”

I snicker. I giggle. I laugh. I try harder, bending the corners of my mouth into a deep frown with my fingers. “Ready,” I say through closed lips, already feeling the giggle building. “Hurry.”

Click.

“Ba ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!” my giggle erupts like long-held breath. “Did you get it without me smiling?”

“Yes. Come back in thirty minutes and it will be ready.”

Thirty minutes later I arrive back at the photo counter, my arms stuffed with wasting-time-at-Walgreens goodies such as the latest People magazine (dying to see Carrie Underwood’s wedding photos), a movie-candy-size box of Mike & Ike’s, sparkly nailpolish in boysenberry, and extra-strength Drano. “How did it come out? Do I look glamorously serious and important?”

“No. But it’s almost average. Anyway, no one likes their passport photo.”

Uh oh.

I don’t look at it until I get outside the store.

“Ba ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!”