Popular

What is it with us human beings…and our desire to be popular? It seems that no matter what our gender…or how much money we have…or how crazy our lives may already be…there’s still this little niggling voice:

“Hey. Look at how many friends she has on Facebook! 527?! I don’t even think I know 527 people! How did she do that? Is she paying people to ‘befriend’ her? I could do that! I’ll just use the green I was gonna use to help Grandma pay for that hip replacement…but hey, she’ll understand. She’d want me to be happy. And popular.”

So, you work and you work and you work and your grandmother’s no longer speaking to you ‘cause you haven’t called her in like, a year...but hey! You’ve got 532 friends on Facebook! You're also broke...but who cares?? Way. To. Be. Popular.

Then you join Twitter….and you’re happy…’cause you don’t have much free time to tweet because you’ve got 532 walls to write on every stinkin’ day, so it’s okay that you’ve only got a few peeps following you.

But one day, Facebook goes down for maintenance and in a moment of sheer insanity, you click on an acquaintance’s Twitter page. “WHAT? She’s following 267 people? And she’s got 849 FOLLOWERS?? WTF??? I’m just as witty as SHE is! Dammit, dammit, dammit!” And so, you begin tweeting like crazy…strings of nonsensical words like “Drum Matthew Perry Canal Street Audi Vibrator Camping Hilton Marshmallow Cuisinart Chocolate Pajamas Snowblower Tearjerker Poptart Bananarama” in hopes of catching the attention of each and every spambot and computer generated search engine in the Twittersphere. You join the specialty groups (known as Twibes) and you tweet and tweet and tweet. And suddenly, you’ve got 900 followers and the tweets are going by so fast, it’s like the stock exchange ticker on cocaine…or that revved up scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. So, you tweet “That’s hilarious!” and “The weather here is crappy” several times a day and revel in your awesome Twitter-popularity….as you listen to your computer *twang!* and *chime!* every time Dick’s Sporting Goods is having a sale on fishing gear, or Gavin’s Cabins in Oregon is running a weekend getaway special, or any of the other 600 sales, ads or links that blow through your incredibly pop-u-lar Twitter timeline.

Then there’s blogging. Blogging’s not tweeting….or writing a quick note on someone’s “wall”….blogging is serious. Blogging is writing….and writing is taking a piece of yourself and putting it out there for everyone to see. The good, the bad, the funny, the sad…it’s intimidating…but you do it! You pour out your thoughts…you tweak and fiddle till it’s just right and you hit PUBLISH!

But, you have no comments. Now, you’d think you could count on your family for some support, but the fact that you’ve missed the last 3 family reunions and haven’t shown up at holidays 2 years in a row because you’re too busy wall-writing and tweeting may have lead some of your family members to think you’re actually DEAD.

One day, you happen upon another blog and that’s the day your whole world crashes. You realize that HER blog has FOLLOWERS and STATS and ADS and STUMBLES and ENTRECARDS and KIMBLES and VISITORS and SUBSCRIBERS and FEEDS and LINKS and ARCHIVES and AWARDS!!!!!

And that’s when you feel the walls closing in on you…and you hear the blood rushing in your ears and you’re vaguely aware of someone screaming, “NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!” and you realize to your horror that the sound is coming from YOU.

That’s when you come to understand what’s really important. Not the tweets…not the walls….not the followers….not your scrawls…

What REALLY matters.......is having good hair. ‘Cause when you’re having a good hair day, everything else just somehow falls into place. Don't you think??

What?? You were expecting something else? Some magical, proverbial, all-encompassing, powerfully prophetic pearly words of wisdom?

From me?

Seriously??

(Hey, look! I’m almost at 600…c’mon 600! Momma needs a few more followers……)