Have YOU ever been referenced in a poem? I have. I am famous!

I believe we should all Google ourselves periodically. Yes, I realize how funny sounding that statement is, but let's focus here folks. It is a big wide world on the world wide web, and we are all on it with increasing frequency and often transparency. This phenomenon presents some fascinating opportunities to connect, communicate, learn, and experience the world in a way that was never available before our time. However, it presents some challenges and real risks as well. Anyone looking to hire you, or who has just met you, or is thinking about letting his kids play with yours, or remembers you in a nostalgic moment can hop online and within seconds pull up what could amount to a substantial bit of information about you (for better or for worse).

So I Googled myself the other day, as I am wont to do, just to be sure there was nothing too incriminating out there. Not that there even could be unless it was completely false. I am, after all, an angel and always have been. Lately though, every time I've Googled myself, the results returned are the same: a Linkedin profile, my race time from the Moonlight Margarita Run last month, and a random link or two to some accounting projects while in school. But this last time there was something new! How exciting...

Here's what I found: a poem, by an old classmate from Doherty who, I discovered (by Googling her), is a prolific poet and writer. I've copied the entire poem and posted link below, adding the emphasis where I appear:

4/16/2008 1:40:28 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
I posted one already--a more William Carlos Williams inspired poem. But I think this is the one I really wanted to write, it just took longer to pull it out!

Wrongfully Accused

Perhaps it was because I
was a lowly high school student—
not, a you were, a grown-up
with a degree—that you couldn’t say
the two words due me.
You had plenty of other words, cheater, liar, willful,
(all thrown out in private, after class,
but everyone heard them clearly.)
Yet when truth slapped you upside your head (before Brady Fitzwater,
who so gallantly offered, had his chance)
you only said “You’re off the hook,”
as if I were a fish, stupid enough
to bite your line.

You retired the next year
and I like to think your
quitting had something to do
with the weight those two little words
hold over the ones
who refuse to release them.

-Sara Diane Doyle

I was not sure what to make of the poem at first, and indeed am still not entirely sure. Clearly I was part of an experience in some way that left a lasting impact on this former classmate of mine. So much so, that she is writing and posting poems about it more than 10 years after the fact. I do remember Sara, and did have classes with her, and I think I probably even know the specific teacher who is the main subject of this poem (as may some of my siblings-anyone have a guess?). I do not recall the event she is writing about, but for some reason found this poem amusing on many levels. I do not entirely understand it-and perhaps, Sara, if this post comes up while Googling yourself you would be willing to discuss your poem with me-but it is well written and it made me feel, just for a moment, as if I were literally sitting back in that classroom, at that desk, at Doherty years ago. That was a neat, in a strange way, so thank you, Sara, for that.

To my knowledge this is the first and only original work I am in that I was not directly involved in producing myself. And for some reason that just fascinates me. Thanks, Al, for bringing us the www. And because I know you read my blog, I ask that for all of our sakes you please zip it about global warming. It is tired already coming from you.