Ron's Cousin Don And Me Poem by Kim Barney

Cowboy Ron Williams has just posted
a new poem about his cousin,
country singer Don Williams.

I have my own Don Williams story.

A few years before I retired from
teaching school, the school district
set up every teacher in the district
with his or her personal web page.

With this web page, parents could
get copies of any assignments due,
even if the student was sick and
could not attend that day.

They could also check on the student's
actual grade and any missing tasks.
They could not see the grades of
any student but their own.

There was also a space where
the teacher could upload a picture
of himself or herself, if desired.

One day just for fun, I found a picture
of Sean Connery, whose beard looked
somewhat like mine, and uploaded
that picture to the website.

One of my students asked me:
'Mr. Barney, why do you have a picture
of Sean Connery on your webpage? '

I laughed and asked her if she didn't
think it looked like me, and she said:
'A little, but not that much.'

That night I searched the internet
and found a picture of Don Williams,
who looked a lot more like me.
I uploaded that picture.

The next day, that same student said:
'I see that you took Sean Connery's
picture off and put your own picture
on instead.'

I just smiled and forgot about it,
until several years later when I
retired. A writer for the local paper,
the Davis County Clipper, wrote a story
about my retirement and used that
picture from my webpage!

She got several angry calls from
readers saying: 'That's not Mr. Barney,
that's Don Williams! '

Poor girl. She had no idea
who Don Williams was.

I went out and bought four or five
copies of the newspaper, and still
have them today.