February Mystery Tour 3

A small mystery next--more introspective in nature.  I am wondering about the relationship of this blog to the web.

My very first blog entry in 2008 mentions how my oldest daughter, Katherine put me up to it.  The title is a little play on X-Files' "The Truth is Out There."  At the time I was curious about what stuff I might put into it over the months and, surprisingly, over the years.  Since then I have complained often about some aspect of daily life, written two poems, one (very) short story, and shamefully, embedded you tube videos of music I have enjoyed.  In some I try to be funny; in others, serious; in a couple, introspective.

Though I started this for my kids, I left the blog "public," meaning it is searchable on the web.  I figured over time some stranger might come across it and offer a comment or two.  In fact, this has happened only once, and the anonymous comment was about the blog entry "Put on your big boy pants and deal with it," from all the way back in 2008.  All other comments have been from friend or family.

I recently figured out how to monitor page visits, and said visits are few indeed.  However, I was shocked to find that, almost weekly, people are still visiting "big boy;" almost to the exclusion of all others, even the recent entries!  What, exactly, is the draw of "big boy pants," particularly amongst all the frangible, friable and/or thoroughly forgettable drivel I have posted?

Backing up for a moment, I want to comment on how hard it is to actually find my blog.  Unless you use very specific terms in Google, it is all but impossible.  Even when you type in the exact title of my blog, it is invisible to Yahoo, Ask, and Dogpile.  Likewise, if you search those 3  for "put on your big boy pants and deal with it," you will not find my blog.  You will, however, find Maureen McGowan's blog with an entry entitled "Put on your big girl pants."  What up with that?  (Kath, you might want to check out her site, she is a budding author). This is confusing-- both Maureen and I use blogspot.com for our platform--so how did I get missed?  For those who don't know, Blogger is a Google publishing tool--but why did those others find her and not me?

OK, back to big boy pants.  This is a very old cliche, seems to me it goes back to at least my childhood.  My titled entry was about coping with, and persevering through adversity.  First, it is about recognizing that almost nothing is so bad as it first seems; and second, if something really is that bad, well, buttercup, you'll just have to deal with it.  So the exact wording, if searched in Google, gets me the VERY FIRST ENTRY!!!  How cool is that?  Apparently when people use the old cliche they find themselves at my door.  Sadly, the entry must not be that engaging since no one ever comments; but I'm thinking of doing an update and see if that gets more attention.

There are other, similar euphemisms I can try for titles:
"Don't be a crybaby."
"Cry me a river."
"Are those violins I hear?"
"Suck it up/in."
"Grow a set/pair."
"Man-up, for crying out loud."
"It's better than a stick/poke in the eye."
"Get your head out your butt/a**/rectum."
"You appear to have suffered a cranial-anal inversion."
"Think much?"
"Hello, McFly, Hello?"
"Bueller?  Bueller?"

Um, well, losing the bead there... definitely want to stay away from copyrighted stuff.  Ok, which of these do you think might actually get some hits?  Ah, time will tell...