Google Search

As a way to pass time, I often google search people. The kids I went to elementary school with (no luck) and ex boyfriends (a few are lost with all too common names) and then there's that one particular girl I went to high school with. Who went to Harvard.

What I remember about this girl from my high school classes is that she never shut up. In an English class with point-based participation, I was seated in front of and behind the most verbose girls, and they NEVER. SHUT. UP. I abandoned mental ship and let the drone of their voices wash over me most class periods. (It didn't help that in general, I hate discussing books. Reading books good. Discussing books bad.)

I can clearly see her making out with her boyfriend in a strategic position that afforded everyone a view from every angle of the hallway. This is a prominent high school memory, and yet, amazingly, I didn't mind high school.

And amusingly, I remember that an essay I flipped out in 20 minutes before school beat hers in an essay contest in 8th grade, and that she congratulated me afterwards. (I won a $15 certificate to a bookstore).

She was the only student in our class to attend an Ivy League school, from what I remember, and it has always rubbed me the wrong way. Plenty of students in our class could have hacked it, but I don't know if they could have afforded it. I read a few of her articles from her Harvard days (she's a journalist, though exactly where she works now I'm not sure) and they are well written, except that they include the word 'Harvard' too many times (um, you're writing for people at Harvard - I'm guessing they know where they are? Or do we just need to print is a certain number of times per issue of The Crimson?) I've read and enjoyed her pieces after graduation.

I know what comes up when I google search my own name, and that it reflects only a portion of my life (a dorkier portion). My brother-in-law's wrestling career shows in his google search, and my husband's ticket citation for underage drinking at the University of Illinois can be found. I have to wonder if other people google me to find out where I am and see those things, and make their judgements.