A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Car

So there we were, Dad and me, sifting through the clearance items at the Fan Shop kiosk just inside the front doors of the arena. The Mavs had just dropped a stinker of a game to the Orlando Magic and we were hoping to find some good deals on some new Mavs gear. As we pawed and perused our way through the offerings of the table, I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to see the smiling face of an older woman I'd never met.

"Excuse me," she said politely, "are you Mandi?"

Baffled, I answered, "Yes, ma'am, I am," now curious as to how a total stranger knew my identity. She must have sensed my intrigue as she smiled over at her son, standing just a few feet away.

"I read your blog, on the web site," she said. "You were the Insider."

"Really? That's so cool! Thank you," I replied, uncertain of what else I should say. "It's nice to know people were actually reading it." I wanted to say more but I was so surprised at being read (and subsequently recognized) by someone who wasn't either related to me or a friend of a friend that I just stood there. About that time, she and her son started to walk away and I noticed Dad was at the far end of the counter, paying for his new bargain bin duds.

I walked down to meet Dad and tell him what had just happened and see what he had bought. For just $15, he managed to snag a Dirk MVP T-shirt as well as a Jason Terry 6th Man of the Year shirt. Too bad I was already broke for the night. On the walk to the car, I relayed my story to him -- even though he had been standing beside me most of the time, he had somehow been oblivious to my interaction with the woman. As I finished up, he just looked at me incredulously.

"Did you point her to your new blog?" he asked.

Internally, I heard Homer Simpson yelling, "D'oh!" and saw him smacking himself in the head as I sheepishly shook my head no. "I just didn't have enough time and I didn't think about it."

"You really should have," he noted, always full of fatherly advice after the fact.

Yeah, I thought to myself, he's probably right.

And when I made it home and retold the story to my dear Rickey, he, too, questioned why I hadn't referred the woman to my blog. "Maybe," he added, "you should print up business cards with your name and the address of your blog and get people interested. Then, once you're up to about 1000 followers, maybe bigger people -- like Cuban even -- will start to take notice."

I love the idea, even though it wasn't mine. Currently, I have nine --count 'em, nine -- followers. Most of them have been with me from the start. It's a long way from 1000.

But we all have to start somewhere, I guess....