Columnist’s Headshot Gets Refresh

For the past 8 years, a headshot photograph taken in my twenties has graced the pages of my local newspaper. I am now in my thirties, late-thirties. It’s time to update my profile.

To spin two phrases from FBI Director James Comey regarding Hillary Clinton’s email habits, the old headshot is not “grossly negligent,” but it is “extremely careless” in its handling of reality.

This is not the only time I have been misrepresented in a widely-consumed publication. An August 2015 edition of Bankers Digest showed my face next to an article about a Kevin Thompson of the Centennial Bank headquartered in Jonesboro, Arkansas.

The Arkansan Thompson had been named an emerging leader of the Arkansas Bankers Association. He sounds like an impressive young man.

My “friends” back here in Texas ridiculed me incessantly for an honest editor’s honest mistake. They obviously don’t understand the frantic nature of the 24-hour community banking news cycle. They accused me of moonlighting and wondered if everything were okay at home.

I assured them I was fine, except for the emotional pain and suffering one endures from being taken advantage of because of his good looks. I’m still considering a lawsuit.

Back to Boerne and the great headshot update of 2016. A variety of factors has compelled this pictorial refresh. For one, autograph requests at the grocery have dipped.

In fact, the only time in the last year I have been recognized in public was at my kids’ school. According to one of their friends, I showed up in art class under a paper mache project.

That was almost as embarrassing as the time a local pharmacy tech flattered me about a recent article while handing me a less-than-flattering prescription. Small-town pharmacy tech would be a fascinating job.

I have also decided to update my headshot because of my fundamental commitment to under-promise and over-deliver. There’s enough baiting and switching going on out there.

Growing up in Nashville, I once barely recognized Tim McGraw and Faith Hill at a local meat-and-three. Things just aren’t the same without the makeup and styling. It’s worse when your headshot is almost ten years old. Perception-as-reality has its limits.

I understand the tension, though. As much as stars don’t want to get old, fans don’t want their stars to fade. It’s sad enough hearing about the Oak Ridge Boys playing second-tier casinos. I don’t want to see what forty years of tryin’ to love two women will do to you.

Hence, most celebrities believe an older photo of a newer subject trumps a newer photo of an older subject.

Not this celebrity. I’m all about authenticity. Therefore, I submit to you today a new headshot…that is almost four years old.

 

Kevin Thompson writes weekly for The Boerne Star in the Texas Hill Country. Follow him at http://www.kwt.info.