Once we have enough perspective on our younger years, it’s easy to look back and cringe at some of our decisions.
If we’re lucky, they were harmless.
So, at worst, Evan Dennison will just have to admit to his mother someday that she was right.
In the meantime, we feel for Dennison’s mom, Heather Waters, who arranged for senior photos of her 17-year-old son – even buying a “very, very large frame” to display her favorite – only to receive what amounts to a set of boudoir photos of the teen.
As they arrived in a field during the few moments of perfect lighting, photographer Tiffany Clark was exasperated when as the rising high school senior dug past the khakis and button-down shirt his mother had put in his backpack and pulled out the blue robe. She begged him to put on the clothing his mother had sent.
“Why are you doing this to me? PLEASE just wear the clothes your mom sent,” Clark begged, knowing she would have some explaining to do to Waters.
But Evan refused.
“I knew exactly what I was doing,” Evan told TODAY Parents.
It turns out, he was angling for “legend” status among his friends.
So Clark had no choice. The light was changing and Evan wasn’t budging.
The result? 47 photos of Evan striking a variety of poses in his bathrobe.
If you’re rolling your eyes, you should know that Evan feels vindicated – he has accomplished his goal. When Clark uploaded the shoot to her professional Facebook page, they immediately went viral.
Each photo is captioned with what she said to the teen to get the “right” pose.
For example:
“Flirt with that imaginary girl over yonder.”
This one? “Pretend your neck hurts.”
“No one:
Him: Jesus is my homie.”
Think people might be uptight about it? Surprisingly, you’d be wrong. Commenters loved it:
There are no life lessons to be learned yet for Evan, for indeed, he has been dubbed a legend after these photos, even appearing on Inside Edition and Good Morning America.
The photos are so popular that Clark is now using them in her senior photo marketing campaign!
While it’s hard to capture someone’s true essence in a photograph, Clark feels like these photos really nailed it. This is Evan in a nutshell.
“Evan is everything you’d ever want to see in the coolest stand-up comedian dude ever, so this is totally normal,” she told TODAY Parents.
And Evan understands that his mom won’t be hanging any of this bathrobe photos in that frame, even though she’s been begrudgingly supportive of his newfound “legend” status.
“She loves that everyone loves them and that they reflect my personality so well, but she’s still very unhappy with them as my senior photos,” he explained.
Evan did promise his mom that he would eventually fill her frame with something more appropriate but still insists that senior photos should be more about the subject than making anyone else happy. (And, frankly, that’s a good lesson to learn early in life, as long as you’re respectful.)
“I’m not saying that you shouldn’t make your mother happy, but senior photos should definitely be your photos,” he said.
Waters also knows that what seems like a great prank now can have repercussions down the line. She told The Chicago Tribune that she worried about the photos affecting his chances of getting into college.
As a rising high school senior, Evan has a little under a year to find out.
Be sure to scroll down for a video of Evan explaining his decision and showing off the famous robe.
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