The Gravelmen

A couple of weeks ago, I added a counter to the blog. Along with telling me how many hits we get a day, it also says where the people are that are visiting.

I'm not sure why I did it, but it's interesting to see how many people read this every day. For the most part, there are about 20 hits a day from about 10 different people. They cluster around Chicago (for obvious reasons) and the East Coast (for other obvious reasons). If I see someone from Deerfield, Illinois, I assume that it's one of my former co-workers at a pharmaceutical company. If I see a hit from Brighton, Massachusetts, I assume it's our friend Jodi. If it's Austin, it's our friend Ryan.

Boring, I know. But whatever. Here, however, is where it gets interesting.

Look up at the top of the page. See what's right next to "Flag Blog" and "Search Blog"? It's a "Next Blog" icon. What Blogger (the service I use) does is they randomly choose a recently updated blog to be that "Next Blog". I assume it only lasts for about an hour or so -- until it randomly chooses something else -- but it's sort of an interesting look at what people are talking about throughout the world.

When you click on it, it can send you to blogs created all over the world. When I just clicked on it now, I got something from a writer in Argentina. I clicked again, and it was Wisconsin. I clicked one more time, and it was the Netherlands.

Well, on Saturday morning, I checked to see how many visitors we had on Friday, and I was astounded to see 50. Fifty! I felt like people actually started to like me! That all those friends and family members who had shunned us had let bygones be bygones. When I looked to see where they were coming from, though, it was strange. Brazil. Florida. Singapore. California. Places where we don't know many people -- if any. But then I realized, for an hour or so, Barnabas Monkeypants was chosed to be the "Next Blog"!

My excitement quickly abated, however. Most of the people clicked on the blog, read a sentence or two, and quickly went on their fine way. Two people read a couple of posts, but most realized that they really didn't care about me and my baby-related neuroses.

But then there was that one person, a visitor from Grays, Thurrock, United Kingdom. (Where is that, you ask? I didn't know either, but I looked it up and found out it's a small town about 25 miles east of London, right on the Thames.) This person clicked 9 times.

Nine times!

How exciting was that! They were interested enough to spend a good half hour reading up on someone they didn't know from Adam. They went back and read from the start of the blog, I'm sure pausing occasionally to compare my prose style to that of classic writers such as Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens, and Stan Lee. It was nice, in that small way, to be appreciated by a complete stranger.

Here's the thing: on Saturday, they returned. They checked in to see if I had written anything new.

And Sunday, they were back.

Monday? You guessed it.

So, I'm now proud to say, Barnabas Monkeypants has its first fan. I'm thinking about starting a club, maybe printing t-shirts. Sure, it'll be slow at first, but by next year, I bet we can double our fan base to 2. The year following, I'm confident that there will be another growth spurt to 3, 4, or, possibly, 5. (Yes, yes, dear. I know. I'm getting a bit ahead of myself.)

You know what 5 fans means? A convention!

I guess what I'm trying to say is this changes everything. Pretty soon we'll be splashing the site with advertising, charging a subscription to read, and maybe even branching off into books, television, and film.

And, years from now, when you complain about all this and say "I read it when", you only have one person to blame.

Our fan in Grays, Thurrock, United Kingdom.

To you, fan, I hope you're proud of yourself.

(Note: The Gravelmen is the nickname of the local football club, Grays Athletic. I'm planning on ordering a t-shirt.)