I ask myself all the time, “What did we do before Google?”  Easily accept not knowing the answer is one thing that we did before Google.  In conversations, someone would say, “I wonder XYZ” or “What was the name of the ABC?”, and 9 times out of 10, the conversation would have to proceed without the answer since most people didn’t carry encyclopedias around with them.  And that was ok, not knowing the answer.

Now, multiple times a day, similar questions will arise in conversation, or while watching TV, or while daydreaming.  We have Google now — the ability to quickly find the answer.  Hooray, the conversation can continue with the new information.  Yippee, I won’t be wracking my brain for the name of the actor who portrayed the dad on Good Times (John Amos).  The downside is that it is unacceptable to not find the answer once the question is asked.

Anyway, the ability to google a topic to find the answer is a great benefit of technology.  As with everything, however, you can’t just take Google’s word for it.  Sometimes, the answer returned is just not quite right.

Case in point: I recently went on a Google fact-finding session.  I have a co-worker that wore the coolest pair of pants recently.  They were green corduroy with little pink chickens all over them.  I set out to find these pants on the internet because I really want a pair of my own.  So, I typed in “chicken pants” into Google image search.

Here is what you get when you ask Google for images of chicken pants:

Google wasn’t wrong.  These are pants for chickens — chicken pants.

Ultimately, though, not what I was looking for, so I typed “pants with chickens on them”.

Here is what you get when you ask Google for images of pants with chickens on them:

Comfy lounging pants

Umm, well, not quite, even though this is a picture of pants that the author says are like “…cuddling with the fluff of baby chickens“.  But I don’t want to feel like a chicken while wearing the pants, I want a pair of pants with chickens embroidered on them.

So then, I entered “women’s pants with chicken”.

Here is what you get when you ask Google for images of women’s pants with chicken:

Perfect Halloween costume

Well, this fake penis and buttocks on a pair of boxers is something that I have been looking for, but it’s not what I was expecting in this search.  I mean, where are the chickens?  And the woman implied in “women’s pants”?

Finally, I entered “human pants with chickens”.

Here is what you get when you ask Google for images of human’s pants with chicken:

Ok….I have a couple of questions.  Does this mean that only chickens wearing pants can grow up to become a McNugget?  Or that there are human pants mixed with the chicken to create a McNugget?  Either way, I think it may be best to avoid McNuggets…unless you like to eat pants.  (As a young person, my Aunt Baby used to chew on the neckline of her shirts when she was nervous, sometimes until she “ate the neck out of shirt”.  Her words not mine.)

But I digress.

So here is the lesson.  Google isn’t perfect, but I still learned something — chickens wear pants.  New knowledge is always a blessing.

Also, I’m not getting any chicken pants (for the bird or for me) anytime soon.