The Perils of a Google Search

When at last it was clear to me that I was finally and truly going to get started with the search, I indulged in a lot of fantasy. I imagined finding out that the boat was docked in some glassy Bahamian lagoon; I imagined buying a plane ticket. I even had an amusing little notion that my long-held habits of procrastination would melt away as I focused in on this goaI, harnessing the dedication and ambition that my father surely passed on to me. Then there was the poignant, wrenching book I’d write that would chronicle my search - a book that would, of course, culminate in my not only finding the boat, but also a new and lasting peace within myself. Maybe a whole new life lay ahead. For a while I became worried that the boat would be too easy to find, that it would be drydocked in Rhode Island and there would be little story to tell.

There wasn’t much to go on at first. My mother couldn’t remember the last name of the man who bought the boat and hauled it away - only that his name was Ed. After 20 years there were no papers, no records. I knew that the one person who would know Ed’s last name was Dominic.  Dominic the 20-years-ago-boyfriend whom I was never nice to.  It would be weird, but I had few other options, and soon realized he was my only option. 

I had to ask my mom for his last name.  Her tone when I asked seemed skeptical.  This was not a quest she would have embarked on herself.  So on my own, in the high-windowed bedroom of my Cambridge apartment, I set to work on my computer, typing “Dominic Snow” into Google and clicking SEARCH.  That I did it that way revealed an inexperience on my part - unless a person is well known, you usually can’t just type in a person’s name and expect information about them to just pop up - there could be thousands of people with that name.  And that’s what happened - the top several results were stories of a fellow named Dominic Snow who was embroiled in a murder trial for allegedly killing his wife.  I tried to narrow my search, kept clicking, searching, reading.  Then I found a photo of this fellow on trial, in a suit and walking toward a courthouse.  And there he was - a little grayer but essentially recognizable - my mother’s old boyfriend, Dominic.