My Vanity Search was not very surprising to me. Turns out, I have a very common name. So, I have a little experience with vanity searches. I just did not call it a Vanity Search at the time.
My first awakening to just how common my name is came about half way through U.S. Air Force Basic Training in February 1975. It was before dawn of the Internet and before search engines became popular. I went to pick up my first uniform from the Air Base Dry Cleaners. The name tag on the uniform said "Tyler" on it. However, when I put the uniform on, it fit me like a little kids uniform. You see, I was then and I still am to this date, 6 foot 3 and 1/2 inches tall. The uniform they gave me was for an Airman that was probably about 5 foot 6 inches tall After a little investigating, I found out that there were 3 other Airman David Tyler in U. S. Air Force Basic Training the same time I was.
This type of incident has happen several times over my life span. It has happened not just in military life, but in civilian life too. One night back in 2004, here in Dallas, I received a phone call at about 3:00 AM in the morning insisting that I was late for surgery. After several minutes of sleep-disturbed insistence to the person on the other end of the phone that I was not a "Doctor", the person on the other end of the phone realized they were talking to the wrong David Tyler and hung up. The next day is when I did my first (unbeknownst to me) Vanity Search. It was during that first Vanity Search that I discovered that there were at least "12 David Tyler'' in the DFW area alone. One of them stayed in the same suburb that I was in and only a couple of blocks away.
Therefore it was no surprise to me that this world-wide-web search yielded a plethora of "David Tyler". Surprisingly, none of the references to "David Tyler" seem to be me (at least the first 5 pages were not). And most certainly none of the pictures of all of the gentlemen were not me either. I even did a couple of search "refreshes" to see if I would get different results and could find a reference to me. However the refreshed searches showed no references to me. For someone like me who likes to stay under the radar (due to a past identity theft experience), I guess this is a good thing and I am guarding my identity well.
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