Mirror, mirror on the wall . . .

The Evil Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs looks into the Magic Mirror and asks who’s the fairest of them all. When the mirror identifies her young stepdaughter Snow White as the fairest, the shocked and jealous Queen tries to have her killed.

I’ve never really liked the Evil Queen. I’m finding though as a I get older, I can relate to her situation. We have a few things in common. We’re both getting older. And, we both don’t always like what the mirror spits back.

I looked into the The Magic Mirror recently and asked which of my posts in 2024 were most popular and WordPress says these five generated the most views and hits:

• Things your parents never told you: My look at some of the things that my wife and I never told our kids.
• Nine lessons from my 9th Anniversary: Nine lessons that I’ve learned about writing a blog. It’s a blog, but can be digested into one sentence. “Write what your heart calls you to write.”
• Looking for my readers: My lame attempt to track down readers. Think Rupert Holmes’ song Escape (The Pina Colada song) and me putting out a personal ad for readers.
• Making up my own rules: My 7th grade English teacher would be rolling in her grave, seeing me flaunting basic English grammar 101. Sorry Mrs. Haughwout!
• My Towering Inferno: I wrote about the my Tower of Babel, the tower of books on my desk, and how it will fall over any day now.

Unfortunately, I don’t believe what the Magic Mirror (i.e., WordPress) told me.

Oh, I know trying to predict hit counts and visitors is a dangerous game. You rarely can really figure out what’s really going on, but I’m of the mind that some of my other posts are better. I don’t consider any of these five as my best writing. I would choose others.

It’s hard to pick one, but these five would certainly be in my consideration:

• A death hits close to home: My story on how I earned my first front page story byline. On one hand I was ecstatic. On the other hand, I couldn’t get out of my head that the story was on a researcher who was walking back from the library and was struck and killed by a car. Here one minute, gone the next.
• A tribute to strong women: I tell the story of being a clueless kid, but still being in awe of my mother in managing to keep our family going during a moment of extreme stress and panic.
• Shh, a few opinions that will get me in trouble: I try to be radically honest. I still think ice cream should be served with every meal and it should be outlawed to be a Dallas Cowboys fan.
• A lesson from the heart: How my mother pulled me from a moment of sheer panic and made me see that anything is possible.
• 100 Things I Love: Let’s try this again: My second take on the things I love about life. Who doesn’t love The Berenstain Bears Children’s Books; the 1970s made-for-TV movie, Brian’s Song, about the friendship between Chicago football players Gale Sayers and Brian Piccolo; WordPress Bloggers; A Simple Man by the band Lynyrd Skynyrd; and the wisdom of A.A. Milne and Winnie the Pooh.

I’m not sure I believe WordPress. But, I’m still interested in what people have to say. The feedback helps generate creativity and reminds me to keep it real. I think Robert Frost had the right idea: “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.”