Beating Google

M sits across from me at the Bookend coffee shop and googles “left-handed underwear” on his iPad after hearing about it last night from Garrison Keillor on “A Prairie Home Companion.”  He discovers that there are 183,000 hits for this concept including one offering the opportunity to buy the item on line and promising that it will "save left-handed men up to 3, often vital, seconds when visiting the loo" (locating this reference is left as an exercise for the reader).

In an excess of gadgetry we now both have iPads, and we’re enjoying the hell out of them.  I have downloaded several books and now have a rule that I must finish the last one before downloading the next one I’m interested in.  It is incredibly easy and convenient to get them and read them on the iPad.  I’ve eschewed the Apple-developed book reading app in favor of Amazon’s Kindle since I already have a long term buying relationship with Amazon and I don’t want to get too cozy with Mr. Jobs just yet.

Now that M’s learned how easy it is to get connected at his favorite espresso haunts, he’s having a fine old time, indulging in every urge to look up words and phrases in on-line dictionaries and Wikipedia,  reading his email a little more often (maybe), moving just a touch beyond his former neo-Ludditism.  The iPads, which we both carry in our backpacks almost everywhere we go since they are no heavier than a book would be, do bring us a step closer to that thrilling Star Trek nirvana where in every case of curiosity or information deficit, one can simply say in a confident voice, “Computer…” and then ask for what one needs.  After a few days of this, M mentioned that he had tried once again, unsuccessfully, to “Beat Google.” 

“What do you mean, ‘beat Google?’” ask I.

“You know—search for something it can’t find an exact hit for.”

“Ah—have you tried Googling your own name, in full?”

“No.”  Pause.  Blip blip blip.  “Oh.”  Zero direct hits on that search, and another challenge met.  It turns out that M flies so far below the radar in Cyberspace and the world in general that there are no exact hits on his full name. 

Of course, M has also discovered the seductiveness of being constantly on line—the tendency to look something up, then follow a referenced link, then find an interesting article, perhaps on left-handed underwear or some other topic, and then wonder “what was I doing a minute ago, anyway?”

The price we must pay in the modern age.

Untethered

My office is moving to a new location.  So we all packed our stuff Thursday night and worked from home Friday—on Monday morning we’ll show up at our new home ten miles away and settle in.  I had often envisioned the scenarios in which I might pack up my little cardboard box with the photographs, mementos, plaques, coffee cups and pathetic spider plant that has somehow managed to stay alive all this time, not due to my own benign neglect but rather due to the efforts of our admin who has a kind heart.  The scenarios I usually imagined were of the pink slip and the take this job and shove it variety.  But in the end I packed my box in a much less dramatic exit, simply to move to a new town.

Still, it brought back some memories of the time I was laid off in November 1989, when I packed my little box in a shocked daze when I was booted out of my high tech job after 9 years.  Back then I hadn’t yet learned the signs and portents of impending layoff and so even though we’d had multiple painful rounds at my company and co-workers were dropping like flies all around me, I was still pretty stunned when it finally happened to me.  I was in good company—a large crowd of us headed over to the Outback Saloon and drank heavily, then I drove myself home, weeping all the way.  It was almost Christmas time, I was the sole support for my little family which consisted of one Mr. Mom and two kids aged 1 and 3, and I was driving home bearing the holiday tidings that I was out of work.

In the days that followed I made looking for work my job—spending 8 or more hours a day networking, fine-tuning various versions of my resume, writing cover letters, poring over want ads (we had want ads then—which were published in the newspaper), going to support group meetings, making cold calls, worrying.  Each morning I would walk the kids over to the pre-school a few blocks away and linger for the excellent coffee brewed by Laurie the pre-school teacher, delaying as long as possible the time when I would have to hunker down for the day to bang my head against the wall of unemployment.  One morning Laurie gently informed me that she had a job teaching pre-school and that it was really not okay for me to hang out trying to have conversation and cadging coffee refills while she was trying to teach the kids their colors and shapes.

After that cruel but necessary rejection I went straight to it at my computer each morning, doing everything in my imagination and power to find work, striving to quell my rising panic and endless fears:  we wouldn’t be able to pay the mortgage we would end up penniless in the street my children would be dressed in rags we would wait in soup lines for our supper we would end up sleeping in the car.

After about 7 weeks, just as the severance was drying up like a Colorado creek in August and the paltry unemployment benefits were about to kick in, I was lucky enough to land an unadvertised job through a connection, and oh what a gigantic relief that was.  I remember those days often when I hear about the unemployment rates now, and I’m filled with a deep empathy for all those who are desperately seeking work.  Here’s hoping the economy turns around soon.  Meanwhile I am so lucky to remain employed, and so grateful.

Pay No Attention to That Man Behind the Curtain

One of the prime goals of parenting is to become utterly dispensable—to end up with kids who are independent and confident and who fearlessly question authority, including yours.  And an inevitable step on this path involves having your own kids realize your utter fallibility---the terrible truth that you are sometimes (may chance oftimes) dead wrong.

I’ve been thinking again (with love) about my own father, a strong personality and a man who did not easily admit error.  When he got an idea in his head it was almost impossible to change his thinking.  Even in my thirties I still avoided crossing him and put up with various eccentric and ill-advised behaviors from him rather than take that one giant step.

 

I’ve also been thinking about my ongoing battle with the voice in my head that relentlessly reminds me I don’t know what I’m doing, I’m an impostor, a failure, yada yada yada.  I recall the day when I proudly told my father I’d been promoted to director at work.  His initial reaction was undisguised disbelief.  He could not accept that I had managed to get this promotion or that I would be able to do the job without failing.

Now, many years later, it occurs to me that the voice in my head questioning the validity of every move I make is my father’s voice:  The Great and Powerful Oz.  And the terrible truth is that there was only a man behind the curtain, a man who was sometimes dead wrong himself, and man who was insecure in his own life and work, damaged by his own father’s disappointments and held back also by the culture of his time which had no room for the idea of a woman like me rising to such a role.

It’s a shock for a kid to finally admit that the parents are human.  Much as it was a shock for Dorothy and her companions to discover that the Wizard of Oz was not so great and powerful after all and they were going to have to find their own solutions to their various problems.  Here's hoping I applied some of what I learned to my own parenting role and to some decent degree restrained myself from excessive hovering, questioning, doubting and dominating.  I hope I’m doing a good job of letting my kids go, letting them rise to their individual occasions, allowing them to seize their autonomy and independence sooner rather than later.  We're not in Kansas anymore.