In our family photos, I’m often the one with arm outstretched, eyes focused to one side, face a mask of concentration.

“The selfie king,” my daughter laughingly called me Friday when I told her my plan.

What if, instead of a fruitless search for meaning on the first day of the 119th Congress — where nine of the 10 Maryland members had nothing important to do until the Republicans elected a speaker of the house — I made a simple request?

Will you do a selfie?

Friday morning sunshine paints a rose glow in Sarah Elfreth’s second-floor office in the Longworth building.

There’s a pyramid of Carlson’s doughnuts on a table, and a Towson University mug on a shelf, not far from Rob Hiaasen’s posthumously published book. They’re Annapolis touchstones for the youngest congresswoman Maryland has ever sent to D.C.

She won’t be sworn in until Speaker Mike Johnson is reelected and won’t worry about things beyond her control.

“Not part of their caucus,” she says.

I don’t know why people want selfies with elected officials, but they do. Is it fame? Power? Maybe it’s just making a connection. So I ask.

“Will you do a selfie?”

Yes, for the selfie, Elfreth says. Arm up. Smiles affixed. Snap.

No, she says, for funny faces.

“As a female politician,” she starts, and then pauses. “You’ve seen the photos they put out on me.”

Rep. Steny Hoyer is five flights up, so Banner photojournalist Ulysses Muñoz and I crowd into the elevators with a phalanx of young aides. Hoyer is the oldest member from Maryland, representing southern Anne Arundel. Elfreth has the north.

We walk into his spacious office — he’s accumulated four over decades in Washington — only to see confusion cloud his receptionist‘s face.

“He’s not available today.”

Luck meets us back in the hallway, walking through door No. 3.

“I wanted to see who I could find, just randomly in the office and I run into you!” I say.

“Here you are!” Hoyer offers.

He is a pro, ready for anything on his doorstep.

“The Republicans have a decision to make,” he says. “Whether they’re going to work with the Democrats with their very small majority and very divided party to constructively do for the American people what we want to do for the American people.”

Selfie?

“Sure,” he says, winking when I praise his impressive real estate.

This might work.

Or maybe not.

All Maryland members have a state flag outside their offices. Two floors down, one stands at Rep. Andy Harris’ door. He is not on the other side.

He’s the state’s lone Republican in Congress and as head of the fractious Freedom Caucus, he is busy settling Johnson’s fate.

“You could wait outside the House doors for him,” his press secretary suggests.

Then bam, bam, bam, bam — four more.

Johnny Olszewski Jr., the former Baltimore County executive, is talking to the news media on the steps of Longworth. The Capitol dome is a perfect backdrop.

“I am just really excited to be sharing this day with my father, who was someone who paved the way for me in politics, with my wife and my daughter, my mother,” Olszewski says after leaving a scrum of reporters.

April McClain Delaney’s family waits in her first-floor office, so journalists are banished to the hallway. She emerges to say she can’t wear her congressional pin until swearing-in, still hours away.

“I’ve run into a lot of our 119th Congress members,” she says. “We have a great freshman class.”

She meets non-freshmen, too. U.S. Rep Jamie Raskin arrives, hiking down the hallway from the Rayburn office building. He says he remembers me from a column I wrote about him in June.

“Did you write something today?” he asks.

When I find Glenn Ivey, he is at the end of a line of well-wishers in his sixth-floor office. One is wearing a tux.

He represents Prince George’s County, so he’s got big worries — mostly Republican designs on the FBI move to Greenbelt.

Today is a celebration though, so he’s happy to smile.

Good luck can’t last.

Rep. Kweisi Mfume is on the House floor when I get to his office in Rayburn, where bright glass and white marble contrast Longworth’s dark corridors.

The staff watches, puzzled as I grab a selfie with his photo.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen is on the seventh floor of the Hart building. It’s the nicest office I’ve seen so far, a spacious corner suite.

“What’s on top of my mind is team Maryland coming together,” Van Hollen said. “To stand behind Angela Alsobrooks as she was sworn in, and to be there with [former Sens.] Barbara Mikulski and Ben Cardin.”

He agrees to a selfie, but only if I take his quiz on Maryland history captured in paintings on his office walls.

It’s hard. If you find yourself in his office, call me. I’ll be your lifeline.

That leaves Alsobrooks.

She’s a star for the day, Maryland’s first Black woman elected to the U.S. Senate. Her name glows atop electronic directories dotted around all three Senate buildings, first alphabetically.

Her aides, squeezed into a temporary basement office with a drum kit, point me to a 3 p.m. reception atop the building. It’s a no-press event, but I can wait outside.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is in a corner chair, waiting. My colleague Leslie Streeter shows up too — she’s Alsobrooks’ cousin.

But the freshman senator is late. So late, she slips through the back door while I’m out front.

I’m not cutting through a hundreds-strong crowd. The closest I get is a photo of someone else’s photo.

My score is 7 out of 10. Not bad, and I found some meaning after all.

Members of Congress are just people, excited on their first day. And they’re willing to pause for a selfie — if you can find them.