10/6/08 Google

So here’s something. Just for fun, I googled myself, both with my maiden name and my married name, to see what good ol’ Google knows about me. As it turns out, nothing. It’s like I don’t exist. Sure, Google brought up a bunch of other people that have my same name(s), but I couldn’t find anything about me personally. An entire world of information, and not one iota that I’m here. At least not on the first three pages anyway. I find that kinda sad.

The other people sharing my name seem to be much better represented. It looks like one is a professional cyclist (bicycle, not Harley), one appears to be a high school basketball player, one lives in Colorado, and one plays volleyball. (Now we know where my athletic talent went…the “other me’s” took it all). As for my married name, one lived in the 1700’s, one is married to a guy named Paul, one is a widow, and one teaches science and is in desperate need of a nose job (bless her heart).

It suddenly occurs to me that there doesn’t seem to be any record of the leap from my old to new name either. Google does not recognize my marriage anywhere, and there is no way for anyone to be able to track me from my past to my new name. Good for avoiding my college alumni donation letters, bad for old friends trying to reconnect. (Note to the old friends: Ignore the picture of the blond with the bad nose. That is not me). I’m hoping that in light of my Internet disappearing act, they’ll just assume that I because the world famous cyclist. I’m cool with that. She has awesome calves.

I guess I should be happy that there’s no easy way to steal my identity or cyber-stalk me. I’m all “off the grid”, like James Bond or Will Smith in that movie where he has the top secret thing and the government is after him. A good thing to know if I ever need to outwit the CIA.

My initial thought was a good dose of self-pity. In a world where the Internet knows something about everything, it felt a little weird to be a nobody. Where are my fifteen minutes of fame? But then I got to thinking about it, and when it is all said and done, all the people that I care about knowing me already do. They make the effort to know me without having to resort to Google. And I feel good about that.