Many Me

August 24, 2002

Eight years ago, a friend of mine whiled away the hours of his summer internship doing what people nowadays call "Googling." Then, he called it "looking up my friends on Lexis-Nexis." Mostly, the articles that came up listed their high school achievements. Yes, he was so bored at his job that he actually found this interesting, and the fact that Googling people is so commonplace now speaks megabytes about boredom levels in our society.

He said he would look me up the next day, and my mind guessed what he might find: a little caption written for a photo of the five-year-old me at school for the Youngstown Vindicator and a Hudson Hub Times article listing who had been Hudson High National Merit Finalists in 1993.

The next day he called: "I looked you up."

"Oh really, what did you find?"

"I mailed it to you. You'll see when you get it."

"Why won't you tell me?"

"Just wait till you get it."

"Why do I have to wait? Why can't you just tell me?"

"Just wait."

Two days later, I got a thin envelope in the mail.

Two stapled pages contained two bits of information that have haunted me ever since: One, I was not the only Laura Shin out there. Two, The Other Laura Shin was an editor at Harlequin Romance Novels.

In the article, TOLS was quoted as saying that readers enjoy Harlequin Romance books, because the books don't bring up condoms or AIDS.

If I hadn't been a writer, I might not have cared. But to have TOLS be an editor (and therefore in the same field), and on top of that, an editor at Harlequin affronted my prudish, feminist, I-am-a-Modern-Thought-and-Literature-major sensibilities.

It became the secret I kept. I pretended that TOLS didn't exist. I was the only Laura Shin my friends knew about, and that was for the best.

Once I started working in journalism, and I was published regularly on the Web, I gained my confidence again. The name Laura Shin was my name, and it was my name because it was regularly being published as my name.

That was the philosophy, at least, until I started Yahooing myself. (This was before Google was around.) TOLS was already out there. I was doing all I could by writing articles on Furbies, Keanu Reeves and nasal strips for horses to hold up the respectability of the name. And still, the words "Laura Shin" and "editor" were freely mingling with words like Harlequin and Romance.

I thought of everyone I knew in grade school. Friends from junior high I had lost touch with. Neighbors that I had played with as a child. People I bonded with at summer camps. Were they out there Yahooing me and finding out about TOLS? Or, even worse, thinking that I was TOLS? That I was a Harlequin editor?

Since that time, I have been on the losing and the winning sides of the Google war. Right now, TOLS is winning. She has the number one spot, and I have spots two, three and four. The Third Laura Shin, an ESL teacher in Los Angeles, has spot five. But all the other spots on page one go to TOLS.

As the pages go on, there is a mother named Laura Shin (the pages referring to her say, "Parents: Phillip and Laura Shin"), a campus planner for OSU named Laura Shin, a 20-year-old medical student in Illinois named Laura Shin, and two !--ADULTS ONLY-- Web sites that contain the text "Laura's shin." But, most of the links refer to TOLS.

So, when I finally got this site up, I was relieved. This site would redeem my name once and for all.

A few days after it went up, I met a friend of a friend for the first time. I told him, "When you Google my name, all these references to an editor at Harlequin Romance books come up. So I'm glad that now I have this site, and people will know that I'm not that Harlequin editor."

"Oh, wait — you're not?"

"No!"

"Oh, I thought you did that also or something. I mean, it's the same field and all — how likely is it that two people with an uncommon name would both be in publishing?"

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Many Me

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