EGG ALL OVER MY FACE

"When thou art bidden of any man to a wedding, sit not down in the highest room; lest a more honourable man than thou be bidden of him; And he that bade thee and him come and say to thee, Give this man place; and thou begin with shame to take the lowest room." (Luke 14:8-9)

Sometimes I walk right into these "egg on your face" situations and I certainly did this time! I should have known better.

After a stressful day or a stressful week, sitting down at the computer and "surfing the net" can be a distraction and a relaxation for me. A lot of times just for fun I look up "stuff" on that free on-line encyclopedia which I'll call "WILL-o-pedia" just to see what I can find. Back in December, radio host Avi Nelson said, "Anybody can post anything on..." (what I call WILL-o-pedia). I chose to believe him, which was mistake #1. I decided to try to post something on WILL-o-pedia.

My thought was to post an entry about my late father, Eugene A. Baril. Now, before you think that was a totally foolish thought, my father was considered the foremost expert on early automobile usage in Massachusetts and about the early history of the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vechicles. He was in the early stages of writing a book about the subject in the 1990s when he also slipped into the early stages of Alzheimer's Disease and that was that.

My first step in doing a "WILL-o-pedia" entry was to create an account, which I did. I then had to read all their rules and policies which I (well) skimmed. One of their big things is that you HAVE to provide links to other places on-line which prove the validity of what you're writing. AND, you can't just make up a person or something about a person. In fact, at the MA Registry site there's a photo of my father holding up the first MA license plate ever produced (from 1903) and including historical information which mentions him. There is ALSO a site on-line from some national criminal justice record center which has information about the two television programs about fatal accident investigation he made as police training videos which were videotaped by Boston's WGBH channel 2 and run on channel 2 AND a number of other public broadcasting stations around New England.

I wrote my piece, and cited those links. I figured that when I clicked "SUBMIT" if there were problems...i.e. the piece didn't meet WILL-o-pedia standards, didn't meet WILL-o-pedia format, etc., it would be immediately rejected and I'd get some blurb to that effect. I was actually shocked when it went through and THERE IT WAS on "WILL-o-pedia"! I tried going to the spot several times just to make sure it had really happened, and it worked! I was SO delighted and SO proud of myself.

I immediately sent an e-mail to several people asking them to check it out.

A short time later, I tried going to the site again. It was still there BUT this time it was preceeded by a big red box! The wording inside the big red box said it was subject to immediate deletion because it did not meet "WILL-o-pedia" standards. There was a place to click to OPEN A TALKING POINTS PAGE and explain why I thought it DID belong. Well, I opened the talking points page, and I did write that this was not just a frivolous obituary...that my father truly WAS expert in his field and left import and valuable artifacts and information about Massachusetts motoring history upon his passing.

Five minutes later I checked.

It was gone!

How did I feel about that? Well, after I cleaned all the raw egg off of myself, I felt pretty bad. I wished they'd have things set up so they reject the entry IMMEDIATELY and not the way they did it.

So, my father MAYBE got 15 minutes of fame on "WILL-o-pedia"; and I'm still smelling rotten eggs on my person!