BY SPENCER TURCOTTE

September 4^th, 1998, I met a girl with a 6 letter name.

Usually I don’t fall in love too fast but after talking to her for a few minutes,

I started to uncover her vibrant personality.

Shades of blue, red, yellow, and green.

Instantly, her extensive level of knowledge was known and I began to feel warm inside.

And when she stared at me and said,

“Search Me if you’re Feeling Lucky” it left me all…

Google-ly eyed.

This girl’s name is Google. Kind of foreign sounding, I agree.

But boy, is she a catch.

Ask her anything, she’ll know it.

We’ve been together for 5,903 days.

How do I know something like that?

Well my girl, Google, of course.

On the 16^th anniversary of our relationship, I broke up with Google!

It finally dawned on me and I realized that I wasn’t okay being with someone who is misleading, constantly lies, cheats on me with approximately 300 million people a day, and feeds me information that is supposedly plagiarised.

Google is not for me.

You see, I found myself rarely retaining anything I learned in class

because I knew that if any of it passed,

I could simply just go home to my girl and ask.

Google is not for me.

You see, we hit a bump in our relationship when she led me

to the wrong information for an assignment.

I knew I was in trouble when the teacher looked at my works cited and said,

“This will need more than just a little realignment.”

Google is not for me.

You see, a light bulb flicked on in my head while I was doing a research project

on the remarkable Albert Einstein.

He didn’t have a girlfriend who assisted him with discovering the Theory of Relativity.

In fact, in order to understand that E=MC^2,

the combination of intelligence and Google must not be paired.

Thomas Edison, Leonardo DaVinci, Helen Keller…need I say more?

What I’m saying is that there is no harm in paying attention to your teacher’s lessons, learning from books, or visiting .edu rather than .com.

Because when you revert to Google as your primary source, it becomes a problem.

Having a girlfriend is a feeling unexplainable.

However, through the relationship and all the information that was provided,

I came to the realization that a large portion of it was misguided.

Feeding off the knowledge of a search engine was where I drew the line and became divided.

It was a choice that needed to be made and I couldn’t go back, once I decided.

It’s possible that you’re okay with being in this familiar and unhealthy relationship.

She has helped you get this far right?

I pose the question, what if?

You throw a fit, yell and say, “No, I refuse to quit!”

Just saying, your gal won’t help, not even a little bit.

But hey, it’s not my place to say so I’ll just sit back and watch you Google It.