In 31 google pages deep searching my name, I found myself several times after I received a notification from academia.emu that 31 people have read an article about me.
What? I’m not the only one with this name. And why 31 people and 31 google pages. What does it mean? And did they email every person in the world with the same name? Were they like, “Excuse me, ma’am. People are reading an article. And, uh, if you are interested, it has your name in it and, well, it may or may not be about you, uh. So, if you want to see if it is about you, pay us $9.95 per month. Thanks”?
Well, what are the chances?
Someone finally paid enough attention to me to find that I am interesting enough to write about in an academic article. Finally! I wonder if it was about my “issues”. Did she write about why I don’t seem to be able to maintain my internet presence? Did she figure out how I both enjoy and dislike everything about the internet and this fact causes me to splurge and purge blogs like a kid with candy on halloween night?
Or maybe she wrote about how I’m the best photographer no one knows about because she is the only one who sees what my eye sees when it sees trees. You know they talk to each other. You can see it in the photos.
Maybe several co-authors collected yearbooks from all over the country from schools I attended since kindergarten and studied how my hair naturally changed on its own against my will from straight to curly to wavy or from blondish to brownish reddish in order to see if there is any correlation between hairstyle and adaptability.
Imagine: 31 people have learned what I already knew about myself. Wow. The state of academics in the world has really fallen.
Or maybe it isn’t about me at all.
Maybe
my name is a kind of constellation or a collection of galaxies that form a seahorse on a field of nothingness and someone finally found me—found it.
Maybe
my name is a newly discovered microscopic organism that promises to enhance CRISPR and such other scientific acronyms.
Maybe
my name is a shiny relic discovered in a pile of petrified horse dung in Anatolia. Imagine the Hittites grooming their horses and one somebody back from conquering is loaded down with metals and gems and doesn’t notice when one trinket falls into the pile of poop--too busy boasting about conquests to the next somebody--and the trinket (which happens to be named the same way I am) waits for 3600 years to be set free from the filth of centuries long after the Hittites are gone.
sparkle, sparkle
[Alt text: blurry image of the sky at night with treetops reaching into a grainy, starry sky]
Now, someone has written about it and 31 people are yawning because they thought it was about the seahorse constellation or the microscopic organism or something else entirely.
Like me.
My mom always told me that I’m something else.