Googlo ergo sum? I was about to find out. My right pinkie hit "Enter."
And there it was: my curriculum vitae spelled out before me in a list of some seven million blue links.
Move over, Ralph Edwards. We've swapped the sentimentality of This Is Your Life for the narcissism of the Web. This is the 21st century, after all, and our egos have advanced greatly in the last 50 years. So, too, has the platform for sustaining that insecure little beast inside us. Today, the Internet and reality television alike proclaim, "This is my life!"
According to Google, then, here was mine:
I sell high-end homes in beautiful Big Bear Lake, in Southern California, and apparently I know what it takes to sell in any market.
When I'm not selling homes, Google says, I'm busy auditioning for movies in Hollywood. I even had a part in Biloxi Blues alongside Matthew Broderick. Now here was some digital validation: Since Broderick had a cameo in She's Having a Baby, starring Kevin Bacon, that puts me just two degrees away from Kevin Bacon (according to the well-known rules of "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon"). Being so closely connected to the Footloose star is enough to make anyone feel better about his existence, but I continued the search.
It seems I also make custom guitars in Sonoma, Calif. That sounds like a pretty hip gig, which probably explains the cool mustache Google shows me sporting while showing off a sweet-looking electric bass.
Perhaps most intriguing of all, I'm a University of Massachusetts research professor who specializes in the taxonomy of the hindguts of wood-feeding termites and cockroaches. Kevin Bacon may be able to dance, but can he dissect hindguts?
The list of my accomplishments, careers, hobbies, and interests went on and on. I'm an insurance agent, an optometrist, a surgeon, an illustrator, the director of the Ohio Lottery Commission, and a politician to boot! I'm a modern-day Renaissance man.
