Have you ever wanted to be someone else, even if it was just for
a day?
In our technologically enhanced, DSL-inundated, computerized day
and age, with the click of a mouse and the clack of a key we can
literally be numerous people all at once according to the
Internet.
Have you ever wanted to be someone else, even if it was just for a day?
In our technologically enhanced, DSL-inundated, computerized day and age, with the click of a mouse and the clack of a key we can literally be numerous people all at once according to the Internet.
In my line of work, without the benefits of high-speed Internet service, fax machines, e-mail and the like, I’d be lost in stacks of paper with the daunting task of actually having to leave my desk to do half my research and reporting.
As a devout user of the Web, like most people I’m sure, I am loyal to certain search engines and servers for different tasks: For maps and driving directions I only use Yahoo!, my e-mail account and entertainment gossip stays firmly with MSN, and for just about everything else, I Google it.
In times of crisis, like when it’s 6:03 p.m., everyone I need to talk to is gone for the day and I’m unsure of the spelling of someone’s name, Google has gotten me out of innumerable possible mishaps with a basic search and gratifying seizure.
After Googling an assortment of people for various reasons for random stories, I decided I would Google myself and see what popped up.
To my pleasant surprise, I discovered I am quite a lady according to Google. I’m a writer, a model, a veterinarian, a swimmer and an Australian school girl.
I have homes all over the country – from the southern-clad shores of North Carolina, to the plains of Idaho, to the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.
The first couple of entries were the real me – most of them referring to something I’d written recently, but then it started to get interesting.
Under the simple heading ‘Erin Musgrave,’ with a teaser giving only body measurements, was one of my most attractive alter-egos, the model.
Because my picture doesn’t appear in any of the other hits, someone who doesn’t know me might think the real me and the model me were actually one and the same.
Which, after seeing what the model me looks like, I’m not so sure it is a bad thing.
The model me is 5’10” and wears a size 4. For those of you that don’t know anything about women’s sizes, that’s extremely thin – the “my daily caloric intake consists of three grapes and Evian” kind of thin.
I have long hair with plump, pouty lips, and the picture on my Web site is by far the best picture I’ve ever taken in a bikini.
A few hits later, I come to find out not only am I beautiful, but I’m a star athlete as well – taking first place in the 50-meter freestyle at a competition in Colorado. And I’m quite the academic as well, performing veterinary medicine in Rupert, Idaho.
Several pages into my search, I came across my favorite Erin Musgrave – an Australian high school student at Moreton Bay College, an all-girls church school in Queensland, Australia.
Apparently, my presence at the Lota House Open Day was so very appreciated they had to include it (along with some of my classmates, of course) in their newsletter.
My friends and I, clad in our plaid skirts and collared polo shirts, served Devonshire tea to the guests and experienced the “satisfaction gained by doing things for other people.”
Some of the guests must have slipped a $20 or two into the elastic band of my knee-high socks, because I’m pretty sure that’s the only way I could feel any kind of satisfaction from serving tea to a group of Aussies.
After a good hour spent perusing Google’s archives of the people who share my name, it made me realize how our modern, high-tech world can be immensely helpful and terribly misleading if you let it.
In researching the life of Erin Musgrave – the vet, the model, the well-mannered tea-server and the neophyte newspaper journalist – I discovered one very important thing.
While I might not have legs up to my neck or a medical degree, out of all the Erin Musgrave’s Google could find, Erin Musgrave, the lowly reporter, had the most hits out of any of them.
So there.
