JUST IN TIME for "google" to become an official verb, my mother learned how to google. About a week ago. She figured it out herself even though, less than a year ago, she thought high-speed Internet access was strictly for impatient people, namely her adult children. When she finally agreed to give up dial-up, it opened up a whole new world: googling.
And so last week, my mother decided to google, and for fun, she googled me. Then she clicked on an essay I'd written called "9 Tips for Surviving the Holidays at Your Republican Parents' Home." It was published in the LA Weekly in 2004.
The only newspapers to grace my parents' door are the San Diego Union-Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, the Catholic Digest and maybe, in a pinch, USA Today. My father, a former football coach, used to hate the New York Times because it had no self-respecting sports page. Now he just hates it for the liberal rag that it is, and he feels the same way about the Los Angeles Times.
So I figured I was safe writing a little 900-word satire for the LA Weekly. I mean, who of my parents' generation and political bent reads the Weekly? The bulk of my mother's e-mails are forwards on moms or kids or dogs or jokes or Erma Bombeck's purple hat musings. I never dreamed she would venture to Google and happen upon the piece in which I liberally trash Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, box wine and the holidays. Now my mother is no longer speaking to me.
My last e-mail from her was something like this: "I googled you and found 'How to Survive the Holidays With Your Republican Parents.' Why didn't you share that one?" Why indeed?
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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-madden16jul16,0,222271.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions