Friday, January 10, 2014

Google Search Lessons


It's a miracle I didn't break my neck jumping over the chairs from the kitchen to get to the family computer this past weekend when I heard littlest clanking out on the keyboard and shouting out, "Mom?! How do you spell Poseidon?" As I'm about to answer, I hear him begin to tap keys and spell out loud, "P - U - S ... " I was in the kitchen stirring spaghetti and just like that, he was about to open the door to every perv in the world to come up to my little boy saying, "I'LL TELL YOU!"

I had been baptized by the internet fire years, ago, and I've got a WARNING! DO NOT GOOGLE! list taped to my forehead about what is off limits for a google search when it comes to kids doing homework. My two oldest are teens, and thanks to the iron fist of experience, I can share this compilation with you.

I remember my son’s fifth grade nutrition project where his assignment was to create a hot lunch menu. Just Google it honey, I told him. See what other hot lunches are out there. My sweet baby typed in “hot lunch” and SHAZAAM if Ice-T’s wife doesn’t pop up carrying her hot biscuits up on a lunch tray. Click out! Click out now! I shouted but it was too late, his retinas burned to the age of a 30 year old along with once dormant parts of his brain now awakened.

Google Search Lesson #1: NEVER GOOGLE anything with the word HOT in it.

Two years later, the second son is working on a book report for Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. The final step was to find cover art for his paper, so we Google *Mice and Men* And we get just that: but with a switch to a tiny word, you know, Mice in Men.

Searching for the word shape is another one that will do you in. My third son was working on a math paper regarding ::shapes::

Google Search Lesson #2: Never Google anything shape-related: big, large, small, floppy, little, fat. They're all bad shapes when people are in them. Naked.

Our internet world has become so perverse that seeking information on cuttlefish results in an emergency visit to the family therapist.

Anyway, my NEVER GOOGLE list for you here. Keep it handy. Why find out for yourself?

[Cut and Paste]

DO NOT EVER GOOGLE:
  • flash drive
  • nerds
  • rugged
  • hairy
  • girl
  • fire
  • hunger
  • farm boy
  • Goya
  • exciting
  • peeps
  • hand exercises
  • tiger
  • strange
  • shackles
  • natural
  • lumberjack
  • farmhand
  • good
This list will keep your children’s souls safe, but keep it to yourself. You know human nature, the kids find this list and they’ll sell copies of it at school for a quarter.

Now, please, don’t google human nature without me there to supervise. I’ll be able to hear your screams six states away.
 
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23 comments:

  1. bwahahaha! This is an awesome list. And a scary one.

    Reminds me to ensure my child NEVER Googles unsupervised!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. All of these cases were true. Don't google monkey butts either. The world has sick people in it. People just sitting at their terminals, hands rubbing together, saying "what monstrosity can I put on the internet today????"

      Delete
  2. And this is why Google also invented SafeSearch. Do not Google without it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. And if you want to visit Dick's Sporting Goods online...do NOT try to shorten the name to what you usually refer to the store as!

    ReplyDelete
  4. oh my geez....even the filters (safe search) dont keep it all out too cause we have them set ultra safe...put just one letter different and whammo....yeah....

    ReplyDelete
  5. I'm one of the squeakiest, cleanest blogs around and the search terms still send me perverts!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ms. A, I have terrible search engines that come here that are disgusting. Disgusting.

      Delete
  6. Andrea, oh yeah! Anything that starts with Dick. Sheesh. Also, Sarah, going to check out SafeSearch. THANK YOU. Also this: totally forgot about us (I don't even want to say b/c you won't believe how naïve I can be) but we looked up what kinds of nuts squirrels like. Bejeweled silver plated little squirrel testicle necklace pendants came up. The visual. I always wanted to do a post called "cast squirrel nuts." Maybe I still could.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I just figure they've seen all of Katy Perry's videos, so that ship has sailed anyway...

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  8. I've heard White House is also a no no. My mother made the Dick's Sporting Goods mistake by typing in dicks dot com. She immediately called me, my sister, and my sister's boyfriend to tell us that "all these penises just started popping up on the screen and I couldn't get them to go away!'

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Jean, this is the second time I've heard that white house com is bad bad bad vs the org.

      Delete
  9. Okay, so I am DEFINITELY printing this and locking it in the safe! Thanks so much Alexandra, I want to keep my baby innocent as long as possible!

    ReplyDelete
  10. *snort*
    And don't Google stuff people tell you specifically not to Google (usually some weird medical condition). Because I ALWAYS Google those.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Goggling is da debil even with safesearch, one little slip an innocent slip, and that innocence is gone. xo

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  12. Do you have any idea how tempted I am to Google all of these right now? Maybe all together? I have issues.

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  13. You KNOW I have to Google Goya now, right?

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  14. ha! Google is crazy! I get so nervous when I see my daughter trying to google something lately her favorite thing to google is things like cutest cat in the world

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  15. Oh man, this cracked me up AND put terror in my heart! Oh brother, what has our world come to? I will definitely never look up cuttlefish.

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  16. When my son was in 4th grade, he googled Crow for a project on the Crow Indian tribe... and got naked pictures of Sheryl Crow. He scrolled right past them.

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  17. Uh Oh, Good save with the littlest. One of my Middlest and Littlest posts can unfortunately be found under emo boobs...*sigh* bad choice that day.

    ReplyDelete
  18. And I just Googled all of these. Man, were my parents lucky I was a child of the 80s and the internet was beyond my grasp. I was busy enough getting in trouble at school looking up "teat" in the dictionary.

    ReplyDelete

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