Crossbows, big hair and choking: Awkward family photos

Somewhere in our history, we all have photos we'd rather no one else see.

I'm not talking about wild-weekend-atthe hotel, "Oh, don't worry, no one will ever see these" photos. (Though really, you should know better.)

And I'm not even talking junior high portraits, weird-fashion-craze-of-the-moment photos where you think you look so cool, or photos with an ex.

I'm talking family photos.

The ones where you, or someone else in your family, or maybe just everyone, looks really goofy.

Or odd. Or awkward.

Or all three.

I know I have a few of those photos hidden away in my albums.

There's the Christmas one where our entire family is lined up in front of the Christmas tree. It was during my teenage moody phase. I've long forgotten what happened before the photo was snapped, but there's my family, all happy and smiling, and there's me, scowling, with eyes that look as if they could shoot lasers through a bank vault door.

Or there's the photo of my siblings and me taken at the local playground. My oldest brother's wearing a coat he coaxed our mom into sewing for him out of fake fur. You can tell the fur's fake, because it has a huge brown-and-white plaid pattern on it. He stands there proudly. I'm the one in the red pleather jacket and long, straight hair. The four of us are arranged on some strange kind of concrete climbing equipment that looks as if Jean Arp had designed it. We look like a cheap album cover for some Cowsills-wannabes.

Photos such as these have been showbeauty ing up on the Web lately (though not mine, thank goodness), on a site called Awkward Family Photos. Located at www.awkwardfamilyphotos. com, the site is exactly what it says: unusual family photos that contain some form of awkwardness.

It's not mean-spirited or snarky, just humorous.

The site's motto: Spreading the awkwardness.

All you need to do is take a quick look and view one or two photos to understand why, in the couple months since its creation, this site has gone viral.

Not only are the photos funny, but they're oddly appealing in a strange way. You can't help but think about the people in them and wonder what they were thinking, what motivated them to take some of the photos they did.

We all know that families do strange things. Generally, they do them in the privacy of their own homes, and unless they're our own family, we're not privy to what they're doing.

But now we know that families also do strange things in the presence of a camera. In fact, for some of them, it seems that the appearance of a camera actually inspires them to do odd things.

According to the evidence on this Web site, some feel compelled to dress in matching winter sweaters or outfits. One family even dressed up as characters from Winnie

the Pooh. (The father, dressed as Eeyore, is down on all fours.)

There are studio family shots, one with a baby making an obscene gesture, another with a baby who, at the moment the shutter clicked, decided to grab his grandmother's breast.

One studio shot shows a family of four. The bald and bearded father is wearing a clergy collar…and shorts! Next to him, the son, dressed up in shirt and tie, has his hands around his mother's neck, as if he's choking her. The sister, looking like a young Molly Ringwald, just looks on.

COURTESY PHOTOS Choking photos seem to be a thing with some families. Who knew? There's another studio shot, with a family in front of a blue and white quilt. The father has his hands firmly around his son's neck. This photo was a Father's Day finalist for the site, and they titled it "The Choker 2."

There are wedding photos galore. One shows the bride and groom peeking around the corner of a stone wall. The groom is standing directly behind his wife, and you can't see his hands, making it look as if they've gotten a head-start on the honeymoon.

Then there's the couple who have just gotten married, apparently, in City Hall. They stand, proudly displaying their marriage license. On the marble wall behind them, it says "Marriage License Bureau." Unfortunately, directly underneath, it also says "Mental Health Dept."

There are pregnancy photos. One shows a husband and wife, outside, facing each other. We can see by the woman's profile that she is indeed pregnant. But her husband, standing opposite her, also looks pregnant. He's wearing a black T-shirt with a white question mark on the belly.

Another strange photo shows nine women gathered around a pregnant woman in a chair. Each woman has her hand on the woman's abdomen. I suspect it's a baby shower photo, but it's undeniably weird. (The caption reads: "Grandma lasted the longest at 2 days, 14 hours.")

Possibly one of the most awkward pregnancy photos on the site is a black-and-white shot in which the husband and wife are naked. The woman is covering her breasts, and her husband is directly behind her, pressing against her. It's not that pregnancy automatically makes a woman look awkward — there are plenty of photos of voluptuous pregnant women — but that these two look so awkward in their own skin.

Neither one is looking at the camera, but looking downwards. It's attempting to be an arty shot, but not quite working.

Visitors to the Web are invited to leave comments, with everyone trying to top each other. Some are funnier than the photo! In response to this photo, one poster asked "What are they looking down at?" Someone responded: "Their clothes!"

Another poster says that the photo is awkward because they're trying to show the of the human body while simultaneously trying to cover it up and hide it.

On the site you can see a number of amateur photos where things obviously weren't planned well. One of those is a hysterical family shot with a girl on a couch and her mom, dad, and brother behind her. Because of the awkward angle, the mostly empty red couch takes up most of the photo; the family looks legless and as if they're avoiding the girl.

Then there are professional shots where the photographer tried to do something fancy and it just didn't work. This includes a shot of eight people, all barefoot and in dressed in various shades of blue, watching an older couple kiss. (I suspect it's the couple's children and grandchildren looking on.)

There's nothing wrong with older people kissing, but the photo just looks weird, awkward. It doesn't look spontaneous at all.

There's a professional studio shot of a family… and each one is holding a crossbow.

There are people with mullets.

Little kids with half perms, half mullets.

Families where everyone has Big Hair. A hairy teen crouched in a wrestling pose. A family posing alongside a walrus whose massive genitalia is on display.

The site was started by two sreenwriters, Mike Bender and Doug Chernack. It's now so popular, they receive hundreds of submissions a day, and have just signed a book deal with Three Rivers Press.

To paraphrase Leo Tolstoy, happy families are all alike, but every awkward family is uniquely awkward in its own way.

Now where's that photo of Grandma?