What's in a number anyway?

Numbers are fun. Age, after all, is just a number. Will it mean anything on The Guitarman's next birthday that the prefix of that number will jump from a 4 to a 5? Maybe only in my head. The big number that is being celebrated today in the paper is 7.8. That is the percentage of Americans still out of work. Not including of course those that have given up looking, tradesmen working 20 hour weeks instead of 40, stay at home moms who only do so because the food stamps they get allow them to eat for free on the governments dime, and those once proud salaried workers now making $10 an hour at Starbucks or Menards. But when you look at the number and not the facts, it's easier to swallow. But the number that has me all gaga today is 10,000.

That is supposedly the number of readers that decided they could waste 5 minutes of their day reading the rambling, narcissistic grandstanding that is passed off as prose on this page. Can I get a woot-woot? Clearly tooting my own horn. But what, if anything, does it really mean? Are they actually reading? Or just stumbling along in search engines for something else altogether?

Ever go looking for something on the internet? Of course you have. But usually you get 10 items that have nothing to do with what you are looking for for every one that is. Example? A piece I wrote a year and a half ago still gets regular hits. 'Wow, I must really have struck a chord that day,' I used to think. Until I looked closer and saw that all of the traffic came from google images. It was about life as a kid growing up in our neighborhood, and watching Saturday morning cartoons. And so I included a little picture of one of my favorite old cartoons, the Road Runner. So when it seemed that someone in Australia had an interest in the childhood of an average American suburbanite, it was actually some kid looking for an image of Wile E. Coyote.

The one article that has gotten the most hits of any though, was one about a study that suggested that the government should tackle the country's obesity problem by regulating sugar. Flashing back to my childhood was a bugs bunny cartoon where Bugs Bunny would always ask Pete Puma, "One lump or two?" in reference to the amount of sugar in his tea. And Pete would respond in that twangy southern drawl, "Oh three of four..." So of course I included a photo of Pete, and of course there are more people looking for images of old cartoons than there are curious readers who want the demented opinion of an obscure blogger from Illinois.

So like I said, a number is is just a number. You can skew it every which way but loose, look at it from different angles, and come up with any number of conclusions. So when the number of people completely looking for something else readers in my little corner of heaven topped the big 10,000 mark, I was momentarily proud of actually accomplishing something. Until the moment had passed, and I looked behind the number, and realized it was probably closer to old Pete's proclamation. So if someone ever asks me how many readers I have had, I will respond with the same twangy southern drawl, "Oh, three or four."