readership...or lack thereof

Realistically, when I started writing this blog, I knew that it was not going to really ever get read. I knew that there were millions of people, all with their own blog, many of which are much more interesting and better written than mine. I also knew that, because I wasn't going to advertise the existence of my blog to friends and family, that Aunt Gertie and my old college roommate were not going to be reading or commenting on it, thus making it look like people were actually reading what I wrote.

This being said, when I first saw that someone had actually linked to my site, I was overjoyed. Thrilled of the 'faint dead away on the floor', 'pee my pants' variety. Again, not that this really meant that 'people' were reading anything I wrote, but that a 'person' was reading what I wrote...and to me, this was still 'pee in my pants' worthy. I noticed, within the next couple of weeks, that a few others had made a little link to me...yes, little old nobody me. Granted, my link was lost amidst a sea of hundreds of other links, but still...this was a link to ME! So you can imagine what heartache it was to see that these same people have since deleted me.

This realization was much like finding out that you've been crossed off of someone's Christmas card list. The first year that a card wasn't sent, you thought that perhaps it was an oversight or that the rise in stamp prices caused them to cancel the Christmas card mailings for the year. But by the third year without a card, you had to admit to yourself that you were simply erased from their address book. My feelings toward being link-deleted are much the same. The first day I realized that I was missing I thought that maybe I was accidentally deleted off of their old blogroll list...accidentally, of course...and that, once re-established, I would reappear. Sadly, after checking back the next week, and then the next, I came to realize that I was forever banished. Which then made me start to wonder, what caused this snubbing? Have they since began to realize that my writing is crap? Do they feel that by my not commenting in their little 'comment' boxes that I don't come around and read anymore? Do they feel that my readership (which is usually a whopping one or two people a week) is not enough to warrant a place on their list because the number of people that read their blogs make them more important than me? Or do they simply not like me anymore.

But I guess, to be more precise, instead of Christmas card mailings, this banishment more closely resembles those old elementary school days. The ones where your friend 'forgets' to give you an invitation to their birthday party. You think it's a simple mistake until you realize that they meant to snub you. And the automatic response is to begin a yelling match with them. You remember the ones, they went something like this...

Your little grade school friend: "I don't want you at my birthday because you're not my friend anymore."

You: "Well if I'm not YOUR friend, then you're not MY friend anymore, so HA!"

Your little grade school friend: "Well you weren't MY friend first, so HA-HA!"

You: "Well you smell funny and you're a stupid head!"

And, no matter how old you get, it seems that when push comes to shove, you often revert back to the old ways of solving problems, no matter how mature or refined you like to believe that you are. And as for a certain housewife and a cop out there in bloggerland that have long since exiled me from their linked pages, all I have to say is, "Well if I'm not YOUR friend anymore, then you're not MY friend anymore either, so HA!"

So just as I have been erased from their blogroll lists, they have been erased from mine! So there. Take that. I'm quite sure that they'll sorely miss the extra traffic that my two readers a week would have provided. And as for maturity? Who really needs it anyway, right?