The Mother Goose nursery rhyme of Little Miss Muffet, popular in the early twentieth century, was both delightful and frightening to me when I first heard it many years later. I imagined a little girl sitting on a stool, dipping a spoon into a bowl of something similar to homemade cottage cheese. My fear of spiders created a monstrous black villain half the size of the tiny girl. I experienced her horror as she threw down the bowl and ran. Not content with that, I added another scene where she became entangled in a giant spider web.
Fast forward to the last decade of that same century when the computerized spider web linking concept was welcomed into businesses and homes. I abandoned my fear of being caught in that web and embraced the internet technology of Tim Berners-Lee who connected the world through an invisible net. I applauded those who invented and improved the original web browser. A glutton for information, I skipped meals and ate cottage cheese and fruit between internet searches. For the last two decades, web browsers have led me through open doors to people, places and events around the world. As a writer, independent publisher, webmaster, and blogger, people now plunge into the unknown recesses of the web to search for me.
While visiting the web today, I peeked in on Miss Muffett, a neighbor. She looks like a little girl, not the aged centenarian that she is. Poetic words about her still proclaim her fear of the spider, but she seems content, settled in her own place. She is proof that the World Wide Web is a great place to call home.