The Camera Is Always Watching

We live in a society now-a-days that you are on a security camera just about everytime you move. You can't go any where without being watched not even to a ball game.

I get The Rocky Mount Telegram at home but it is the afternoon after I get home from work before I get a chance to read the Paper. Most of the time I have already seen the headlines before I sit down to look at the paper because I go on line and see it first there.

This past Friday night the Telegram cameras were shooting snapshots as they call it the Fan Cam of the Nash Central – Rocky Mount game. I had a chance yesterday to go through all 57 shots in which I ran across one of me and David Hahula had gotten a close up of me.

I can tell you right now it was way to close. I think it is the worse picture I have ever seen of myself.

This picture replaces one which I have considered my worse photo. Way back during my days as a hotshot disc jockey in Ahoskie I was asked by Robinson Studios in Ahoskie if they could do a portrait of me and put it in their window as advertisement. Everyone knew me so if Tony gets his pictures from Robinson why shouldn’t I kind of a deal.

If you have ever been to the picture show in Ahoskie the theatre is called the Earl. Robinson Studio was in the entrance to the theatre. If you were standing in line inside the entrance you could look over the pictures that Robinson had on display.

As a 19/20 year old hotshot disc jockey I had hair that flipped up around my collar and a mustache. I went by his studio one afternoon and for the next five years I had to look at that awful photo. Every time I went to the movies I had to look at that thing. As time went by Mr. Robinson died and hopefully that photo is lost in the city dump somewhere in Hertford County.

We all have our bad days and apparently I was having one looking at that photo. Since seeing that photo I am having flashbacks of seeing that photo in the lobby of the Earl Theatre. The only difference is I see the photo that David took there instead of the old one.

We all think we haven’t changed one bit over the years. When we look at ourselves in the mirror we see ourselves as 16 year old and not the haggard old people we really are.

That old picture from Robinson Studios hopefully has burned and there is no evidence that it exists any more. I might as well go ahead and give the Telegram warning. As soon as they removed that Fan Cam pictures and replace them with another game I will be going into their archives and try to hack that entire set of pictures. That picture has got to go. I have spent the last thirty five years trying to live down that portrait at Robinson’s. I don’t have 35 more to live this one down.

I don’t need anymore reminders of getting old and what I look like on my bad days. I say that hoping that I look better than that most days.