Nancy Babcock Becomes A Bride

I did that yesterday and boy, was I surprised at what I found! It was right there at the top of the Google search page for my name–the very first entry–and here’s what it said: “Nancy Babcock Becomes A Bride.” What’s more, I apparently did this 16 years ago…and it was reported in the New York Times, so it must be true. Oh my word, I need to file a missing person’s report. Where’s my husband?

I wonder where I’ve been all this time. Am I living in a parallel universe from that of internet reality? That could explain a lot beyond my now questionable marital status.

It was 16 years ago that I moved to France–or so I’d been thinking. Maybe I got married instead, Or, perhaps the marriage, including the apparent fact that my husband is missing, was just lost in the chaos of the move. Yikes! What did I wear? I must still have the dress around here somewhere–I never throw anything that significant out…oh wait a minute, I do recall pitching my first wedding dress, but wasn’t that in a past life? Now I’m really mixed up.

So, about that missing person’s report. Who could my husband be? Do I get to choose? I suppose the choosing has already been done, but in case it hasn’t, who would I choose to go searching for, assuming he’s actually out there and waiting to be found? This is great–since I’ll get police help with the search, I’d better make this good–really good.

OK–I choose tall, dark, and handsome–I know that’s not original, but sometimes it’s best to go for traditional. Think “Big,” as in the Sex and the City character, but a few years older.

My missing mate is someone who decides spontaneously to jump on a plane to meet me for the first time at an airport over 1,000 miles away from where either of us lives. Someone who begins our first ‘date’ at Costco and ends it counting falling stars from a Sedona balcony…and then spends the next 2 days with me, no destination in mind, driving around Arizona in an open Mustang convertible. Someone who invites me to travel across the country to go raspberry picking with him…and his mother. Someone who, when faced with the myriad choices at Starbuck’s, chooses mocha frappuccino, and who travels to Mexico twice in one week to kick the tires of a newly arrived Spanish bull.

So, that should make it easy enough to find him, but then again…what if he’s not in this world at all? Do police searches cover parallel universes? I’ll have to check that out.

But wait…there’s another Google listing for me and this time the news is rather grim. I am dead. I allegedly died just after this past Christmas. Oh my.

I’ve been saying all along that my recent move to California has made me feel that I’ve died and gone to heaven–I thought it was just an expression, and also just a feeling, but perhaps it’s a whole lot more. Why haven’t I Googled myself before?

And it gets even more curious. Since discovering my state of apparent marital bliss–or perhaps death–I have continued to search Google for any other of my recent activities of which I have perhaps previously been unaware.

My original intention had been to see where, in the scheme of things, nancybabcockwrites.com showed up on Google’s list. I have discovered that sometimes it’s on the first page of results, and near the top, in the #3 position. But then, overnight, it can disappear to its burial ground at the bottom of p.6 of the Google results. Why this is, when other listings never seem to move around at all, I cannot say. There are many things I cannot say.

However changeable this, my website’s position, continues to be, there is one thing that remains sure and steadfast in this mostly unpredictable line-up of the Google world. The unchanging #1 listing for me, Nancy Babcock, says irrefutably, that I have become a bride. So, it must be true.

Break out the champagne!