Un-Googled

I Googled myself the other day and discovered that I do not exist. I know I've been losing weight but I didn't realize I had disappeared. Maybe I died and it slipped my mind. But if that were the case, whose teeth was I flossing this morning?

Indeed, there are pages of imposters having taken my name when I wasn’t looking. I think of them as my generic equivalent. At one time I counted seven Norm Levines in the San Fernando Valley. One of them was my customer. I coveted his orange sweater. Another Norm Levine was a pharmacist. I hired him for one day back in 1968. I couldn’t handle the two of us side by side.

The Norm Levine impersonators included a man who entered a marathon and approached the finish line from the wrong side. I admire him for thinking outside the box. Another one sold knives at gun shows. I suppose that’s a step in the right direction. Then there was a man who I braked for on a highway in the Catskills. He was an antiquarian bookseller using my name. I blessed him and moved on. 

Flying under Google's radar takes a special skill. I ought to lecture those in witness-protection programs except I don’t know what I didn’t do to go unmentioned. I suppose if I won the lottery I may get noticed but that would entail buying a ticket which is out of the question. 

Perhaps I have moved on to my next incarnation. as a fly on the wall. Though my preference is to first be a fly in gazpacho soup swimming the backstroke.  

Since I am a certified man of no importance, I imagine there must be thousands of us. We are among the rank and file, the extras in a Cecil B. DeMille epic, the also-rans, the uninvited party-crashers whose attire blends in with the sofa. We have achieved anonymity.

I remember disappearing around age 8 or 9 when I got lost in a sea of beach umbrellas at the beach. I was rescued by a lifeguard who swam the Australian crawl in the sand to reunite me with family who probably didn’t notice I had dematerialized. Then, in a pharmaceutical chemistry class presided over by a proto-fascist professor who delighted in humiliating students I managed to disappear behind some extra large body.

I have had about fifty poems published in literary magazines but all of them before the world went digital. Count that as prehistory. I wonder if those Greek playwrights thought of themselves living in minus time.  

I don't suppose loving friendships register on Google. My eleven hundred blogs also do not ring Google's bell. I expect when my name does appear on the obit page old friends will say, Gee, I thought he died years ago. In the meantime I can report that being disappeared by Google is only a flesh wound and it's not terminal.