Tales of a coffee-holic: Your face is not that great

Please stop taking selfies.

For those of you who don’t know, a selfie is a photo one takes of oneself, usually on a cellphone. These photos are generally close-up face shots of people going about their daily business and trying to convince Facebook friends that their lives are much more exciting than they are in reality.

If you don’t take selfies discourage your kids, your grandkids, your co-workers and your neighbors to stop. If you see someone holding up his or her phone at a jaunty angle, making a pouty-face and trying to get the perfect shot, please risk the assault charge and slap it out of the person’s hand.

I think we all have a tendency toward narcissism, at least sometimes. Every woman has a good day in which her hair and her outfit are particularly perfect when she might wish someone was around with a camera to capture the moment. Back in the day, we just had to wait for someone with a Polaroid or a Kodak to snap a shot.

Not anymore. Now we get to take as many photos of ourselves as we want on our iPhones, check them to make sure they’re absolutely perfect, and after deleting about 20 not-so-great ones and wasting half of our lunch break doing so, we can post that one perfect snapshot to Facebook so all our friends can see what a great time we had stuffing our faces.

People used to have to tell their friends false stories in person about the awesomeness of their job, their significant other or their trip to Mammoth Cave, Kentucky. Now we get to tell people about it on Facebook and Twitter and inundate them with photos of nothing but our own faces at work, at rest and at play.

I’m not sure I understand the point of taking a close-up photo of my own face at a new restaurant, while I’m on a date or at a vacation destination. My friends already mostly know what my face looks like and I’m sure they would love to see a little more than the few centimeters of beach visible behind my beaming smile in my beach selfie. I’m also fairly certain that people don’t want to see your after-workout picture. Sure, I’m glad you’re taking care of yourself, but I’m not too excited to see a close-up of your sweaty face after you ran six miles.

I’m sure people have been finding ways to take photos of themselves for years, but cell phones have made it way too easy. No matter what you think, unless you’ve been stung by bees or experienced some sort of horrible accident, your face does not change enough from day to day to warrant an endless chronicle of what it looks like.

It does not convince me that you are any happier than the rest of us that you and your boyfriend take endless close-up photos of your faces side by side. For all I know he could have socked you in the jaw and told you to go make dinner right after you put down the phone.

On the other hand, maybe I should have taken a smiling rodeo selfie with some horse dung in the background last weekend, just so everyone would know how much fun I had.