Ten Things I Googled Last Week
And One I Didn’t
I don’t usually fiddle with this blog, you know, it’s a sort of stream isn’t it, sometimes of consciousness, sometimes of – oh – let’s just say it’s organic. But this one I fiddled with. Couldn’t decide whether to put the ten things I did google first or the one thing I didn’t.
Obv went for the ten things first and I think you’ll see why so here goes.
The Ten Things I Googled Last Week
Can you throw your jaw out eating pizza
Alternative uses for a chin-up bar
Are farts living organisms
Does a vertical fish mean he is dying
How to humanely kill a fish
How to humanely kill a pet fish
If one knee hurts will the other
Help
Are dog years accurate
The pushcart prize
All those searches are self-explanatory except maybe the fart one but that was a whole rabbit thing and perfectly excusable, and the last one, the Pushcart Prize, I’m happy to say I googled because one of my stories has been nominated. Imagine that.
If you feel like reading it, here it is and if you don’t, here it isn’t.
Also, somebody told me their mom googled how do you google, lol!
This next part is decidedly different from the first part and if you could just pretend for a minute we’re at a sushi joint, you know, maybe for lunch or something just you and me and we both take a chunk of pickled ginger and it cleanses everything.
Here’s some space in case the ginger thing didn’t work.
And Here’s The One I Didn’t Google
Regretfully, I don’t need to google dementia, but I know people who do.
While they’re at it they should try looking up compassion and its synonyms – they certainly are familiar with its antonyms – and they should also look up care and dignity and, oh why not… love.
And maybe motherfuckers just to see if it rings any bells.
I am now taking a whirl into fiction. Here I go. Any similarities blah blah blah are purely blah blah blah.
Let’s call her Sophie – very different from her name but also similar – in the same way light and dark are similar.
Still with me?
Sophie was kind to me when I first started working at Undisclosed. I mean right away she told me about lunch and did I bring mine and so there I was on my dreaded first lunch break with my team in a small room just us and I was able to be a reasonable version of myself. Also she was a fan of my work from the get-go. My first few concepts were vehemently rejected by the reps, but she said hang on to those, they’re great.
And we just sort of grew on one another and the years flew by, we worked remotely together for the duration of the pandemic and occasionally went into work the same days this past summer, and that’s when I first noticed something was afoot.
She’d love that. She was a fan of beautiful, underused words and phrases.
Sophie’s the kind of person, well, it’s like her mind always seemed to be on the end of a a kite string and this was true all along. It is a trait I look for in people and cherish when I find it. All of my children and their father can be described in this way and all my best friends, too. You know who you are. Or at least who you were.
She also drank too much and I joined her once at an Undisclosed Conference and we just sort of wandered around the grounds of an Undisclosed Castle giggling beneath Disclosed Stars.
But in the summer she couldn’t do her job well and needed to be reminded of this and that and then the other things too, and you get the drift, right? Sushi lunches became a little painful.
I understand that people who don’t do their jobs should get fired but what of those who can’t do their jobs.
Well, folks, they get fired, too.
My train goes by Sophie’s building. She told me where it was that first day when she found out I took the train to work. She said look for the corner window with the curtains like this and she drew a sort of two-finger description of them and that night when I flew by on the train, it was exactly as she drew, white and quaintly tied-back, a couple of nice hanging plants, one of which she named Ian, another Everard I think she said.
I only go in when I absolutely have to these days, partially because I have a hard time pretending, and also just because. Monday was the first time I saw Sophie’s window in a very long time because you can’t see it for the leaves but there it was.
I call her often, text pictures of Daisy, tell her about my kids and she seems fine, always says things are fine, that she likes the easy days of television and pyjamas during what she’s beginning to admit is her retirement.
But in her window I see a different story. The curtains hang awry, like missing teeth. Her boys are gone. Chaos is afoot.
She’d love the way I put that.
