dixiblog.com

Mom calls me now, when she needs phone numbers or addresses she can’t find. I’ve become her own personal directory service for hard-to-find numbers, because I have mastered the use of the magical beast known as the “Search Engine.”

“How do you find that so fast?” she wants to know.

“I Google it, Mom. I go to Google, and type in what I’m searing for, and it’s there.”

“I don’t think we have that Google,” Mom says. I stifle the urge to laugh.

“No. No Mom, you have Google. Everybody who has the internet has Google. You just don’t know how to get there. It’s at Google.com.” I realize I’m actually shaking my head while I’m talking to her.

“Oh. I see.” I wouldn’t have been surprised to find out she was taking notes at this point.,.

“How come I can’t find things, Dixie? I typed in ‘Reliable Insurance Address’ to get the address into a search engine thingy, and it didn’t tell me nothing.”

“Well, that’s a good try, mom, but ‘address’ is too common of a word. That’s why I used the city name instead.”

“Ohhhhh. You’ve got to be smarter than the search engine, huh?”

I don’t say ‘Yes.’ Instead, I reply, “You’re smarter than the search engine, Mom. You just have to figure out how to get it to tell you what you want.”