Bupkis mit Kuduchas

There are approximately 22,700 references to me on Google. That is 66 pages of links. Of course simply by googling one’s name one cannot be certain that all these references are to you. There could be other Rabbi Rami Shapiros on the Internet. So I checked, page after page. And it turns out that there are in fact 22,700 references to me on the Internet. Is that cool or what?

Answering that question will determine my worth as a human being. And answering requires an objective standard against with to measure my numbers. So I chose to measure myself against my father. I googled his name and came up with…wait for it…948,000 references. My dad has 41.76211453 more references than me on Google. Damn!

But wait a second, maybe all those references aren’t to my dad, but are just triggered by his name, Archie. As it turns out as long as my dad Archie isn’t a bigamist married to my mom, Sally and some broad named Veronica, then the actual number of Internet references to my father is…NONE! Ha! None, nada, zip, zero, notaonedo!

That means a lot to a Jewish boy in never ending competition with his dad. And I won. At least I think I won. There seems to be something called Archie’s Law that deals with the scale dependency of the effective matrix diffusion coefficient. I don’t know what this law is, but the words “scale” and “dependency” say it all: Yes, Dad, I got on the scale this morning and I am still fat. And, no, Dad, I still haven’t overcome my dependency on your approval.

So with 22,700 Google references to my dad’s zero Google references, why do I still feel inadequate? Maybe I should compare myself to someone else? How about Wayne Dyer? How many Google references does he have? One million, six hundred and sixty thousand! That is more than all the Archies combined!

I don’t get it. I’ve written at least as many books as Wayne. We are both members of National Public Television. We both do lots of public speaking. What has he got that I don’t, besides 1,637,300 more Google references?

Now I’m not saying 22,700 Google references is bupkis. I am grateful that I have made some mark on the digital world, but in a world where even “dog turd” has 135,000 references on Google, you have to wonder. Does my life matter even less than bupkis mit Kuduchas? (Google it!)