We were preparing a presentation about attending a TV show taping. In the middle of putting together the slides, two friends asked to join our group because they forgot about the assignment.
Immediately, I was like “of course, no homie left behind”. Why not? All we had to do was just add their names to the presentation and report.
I know that’s counter to what most of you would do but here me out.
You know what’s hard about group projects? Not succumbing to the petty stuff and focusing on the long con. You see, when you snitch on your fellow students, you’re just wasting your energy.
Teachers say they’re failing the entire group because “yOu DiDnT wOrK aS a TeAm”. Meanwhile, the reality is they don’t care about teamwork. They’re mad that you gave them extra work. Didn’t you know that lazy teachers invented the group project? Why grade twenty-six reports when you can make a split decision about six group presentations.
Oops. As we were re-assigning the speaking roles, we remembered that we had to provide photographic proof. Our two friends didn’t actually go to the taping, so they weren’t in our group photo.
Instantly, my criminal mind said, “Oh, that’s simple. I’m just gonna Photoshop them into the picture.”
Photo. Shop. Them. Into. A. Picture.
Hold your laughter because that’s not the first problem we’ll encounter.
The next day we get to class and dun dun dunnnn, we have to project our slideshow onto a large screen. Boom, we decide to run through the slide deck just to see our work.
Eek! I dunno if we were all so gassed up about the con we were trying to pull, but the photo was not good.
First of all, their heads were a completely different size than ours. Secondly, you could see we were in different lighting. My original group mates and I were all purple from the studio lights. But those two clowns were white from the fluorescent lights. And don’t even get me started on the jagged edges of where I cropped them from their background.
Mercy!
Ever the optimist, I tell them to turn off the lights, hoping it would minimise the horror.
PAHAHAHAHA. TuRn OfF dA LiGhTs! What was I thinking?
The weird thing about Photoshop is you can edit an image to the best of the best, but if one thing is off, suddenly the whole fantasy you create comes crumbling down.
Even if there was time to edit the photo, I wasn’t no master of image manipulation.
But, I ain’t never one to give up. When it’s time to present, we got up there like— boom! Here we all are. Boom! Anybody got questions? No long talk. No lingering on that image. We also made sure to remove that one photo from our report. Last thing we needed was for our teacher to study that image.
Shout out to the teachers who don’t put all the lazy people in one group. I see you.
Award-winning Caribbean comedian, Onicia Muller’s weekly humour column, Just Being Funny is chicken soup for the naive sceptic’s soul. You can hire her to write anything from blogs and newsletters to bathroom poetry funny greeting cards. Join her newsletter for funny stories and stand-up comedy. OniciaMuller.com
Photo by Onicia Muller
