Names

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Lara Fauth

When I was in college I rode on the University of Oregon equestrian team.  We were all women and as is often the case with groups of women, there were arguments and disagreements that in retrospect seem juvenile and stereotypically female.  In spite of this, I still remember one team member as a complete reprobate and have less than fond memories of one of the others. However, one of the team members has since become one of my dearest and closest friends.  You win some, you lose some.

For some reason I cannot articulate, last night while expunging Christmas decorations from my home, I suddenly remembered one of the women I rode with. I remembered her with fondness and wondered what had become of her.  Of course I jumped online and searched her name and made some discoveries as to her whereabouts.  I’m hoping I can connect with her.

In any case, this got me thinking about the people I knew in college.  What with Facebook and this blog and my firm website, with little effort, if anyone wants to find me, they can.  I wondered then, why there is a whole group of people from my past who have not turned up as requesting my friendship or via emails and whatnot.   Then it dawned on me.  Duh, Lara.  For five years, I had a different last name.  Anyone searching for Lara Fauth wouldn’t find much at all.  I changed my name back to my maiden name of Gardner as soon as I got divorced in 1999, which is before the ability to locate one’s former friends and acquaintances online became so ubiquitous.

I’m not sure anyone has looked for me.  I searched for Lara Fauth and found a site linking Lara Gardner to that name, so it’s probable that if someone wanted to find me, they could.  But I did have to look in the site to make the connection, it wasn’t just sitting there on the search page in google.  The idea occurred to me that if I put the old name in my blog, if someone searched for that name, they would find me, and so that is what this is.  It’s an attempt to put my old name on a site linking to my new name, so that if anyone who knew me while I was married ever wanted to find me, they could search Lara Fauth and perhaps this page would show up.  It can’t hurt to try.

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Who Wants Me?

WordPress is great.  It gives me lots of information about my blog.  I get statistics on how many people read it, an analysis of top posts and searches, all sorts of things.  One thing it shows is what searches someone used to find my blog.  There have been some VERRRRY interesting searches that somehow found me.  Stuff like “spank nun big broomstick.”  Huh?  I’m just the messenger…don’t ask me.

Anyway, nearly daily there are searches that locate my blog by looking for my name, often several a day.  What I want to know is, who is looking for me?  It’s weird, knowing people are searching your name.  I mean, I’m not naive.  I know people google search each other all the time.  I do it.  It’s fun.  But this happens for me nearly every day.  This means someone out there is searching for my name quite a lot.  I know of 2 other Lara Gardners in the USA.  One is an attorney in Florida.  The other is some sort of scientist who wrote some articles.  So it is possible they are the objects of these searches.  Yet some of them are probably for me and it’s kind of weird.  Who is looking for me?  I wish I knew that.