Little Moments

Yesterday I came home at lunchtime and picked up my 16-year-old to go to the Verizon store. Her phone has been acting up and it was time for an upgrade.

It took 2 and 1/2 hours. While there, we found out we qualified for a discount, based on my employer. But I had no official ID with me that Verizon would accept. (After the salesperson checked with his supervisor, they gave us the discount anyway.)

As we were enduring one of the many long waiting periods, I brought up my KQED Author ID page, which has my photo and the list of (39) articles I supposedly have published on kqed.org. (I think the number is greater than that, but whatever, technology is never perfect.)

"Wow, you are famous, Dad!" she said.

It turned out she was Googling me and found the Wikipedia entry about me ("David Weir, Journalist).

As she read that entry, she said, "is this true?" She was referring to one line.

"Nope that used to be true," I replied.

"Let's fix it."

She then edited the entry and corrected the outdated information.

There we were in a Verizon store on Mission Street, on an iPad chained to its display case, correcting some information about my half-century career on the biggest crowd-sourced encyclopedia in the world. And my daughter was discovering that I have an Internet footprint for the very first time.

Her biggest disappointment?

"Why didn't they talk about your kids?"

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