Google alerts are powerful.  [By the way “www.googlealert.com” is not Google.  To get true Google alerts use "www.google.com/alert ”]  The string ‘Kevin Arnold Red Room” dutifully  shows me whatever slips into the blogosphere with my name on it.  But the one that finds instances of the two words ‘Kevin Arnold’ goes off much more often and has introduced me to myriad Kevin Arnolds, including, of course, the iconic one played by Fred Savage.  I’ve become a bit of an expert on the charming show The Wonder Year from about ten years ago.  For example, how but through alerts could I learn that one of Tiger Woods’ paramours, Holly Sampson, now a porn star, once dated Kevin Arnold on the show?

But Fred Savage is not the only faux Kevin Arnold.  There are hundreds of them, from a Police chief  http://www.townofsmyrna.org/police/administration.htm, to a college professor of divorce http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/bloggers/kevin-d-arnold-phd-abpp (which is a little serendipitous since my poetry book concentrates on recovering from divorce).

What brought this up was today’s basketball star (pictured) http://www.eastfieldnews.com/hot-handed-arnold-leads-harvesters-into-regional-1.2013396   And Kevin Arnold, 56, of Hilton Head Island, S.C. is an NCAA Women’s Basketball referee. He won the Naismith Award as the Women’s College Basketball Official of the Year in 1998.

In South Africa, we have a world-class winemaker (I opened a bottle on my birthday) http://www.wine.co.za/News/news.aspx?NEWSID=15271&Source=PressRoom and in England Founder and CEO of IODA, Kevin Arnold guides the growth of one of the largest digital distributors of independent music in the world http://www.iodalliance.com/who.php.

There are also Kevin Arnolds who are bad boys, from burglary suspects http://www.illinoistimes.com/Springfield/article-7923-burglary-ring-busted-but-some-escape-punishment.html to sex offenders: http://www.life360.com/sex-offender-kevin-arnold-homosassa-fl.  Alas!

My first name, seldom used, is John.  Perhaps I should just use my initials.  How does J K Arnold sound?  I understand they have a writer using those initials as a first name in the UK, but I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.  She has, they say, more money than the Queen.