This guy is joshing me, right?

I've operated this blog now for over three years -- I'm rapidly closing in on 1000 posts, a milestone that will almost certainly be reached by the end of the first week of March.

Quantity, not quality, that's the motto of this blog!

(No, wait, did I get that wrong?)

Anyway, my many posts get the top of this page for a day or two at most, then sink gradually into the uncharted mists of the Blogosphere. But search engines may still find the older posts, sometimes. Usually -- almost always -- the searcher clicks on and off, disappointed, in a matter of seconds. Whatever he or she was looking for, my old post was just not it. But sometimes -- rarely -- a post that's nearly a year old may attract a comment... and not just from an automated spam program.

I cite as an example one of my April 14, 2008 posts, An Ode to Spider Solitaire. That post was (1) an admission of my addiction to the Spider Solitaire game and (2) a confession of just how bad I am at it, especially at the "Difficult" (four suit) level. I called Spider Solitaire my "secret shame." I was loathe to write about the game, even on this anonymous blog, because, as I conceded, "Frankly, I [am] just so pathetic at Spider Solitaire that I didn't want the world to know I was hooked -- and lousy at it."

And now the stage is set for me to tell you what happened earlier this week, when someone, who calls himself Gary, came across that Spider Solitaire post and left a comment.

You'd think I'd be happy to get a comment, especially on a stale old post. After all, that's the kind of thing that might give a writer hope that his writing can -- eventually -- maybe -- some day -- attract lots of readers. You know, on my writing's own merit?

But Gary's comment did not give me hope. It put me instead into a deep, dark depression.

I know I can get depressed easily enough. Perhaps too easily. Here's the part of Gary's comment that put me right over the edge:

My wife and I both found spider solitaire - and we love it. For some reason it clicks with my brain. While I consider my patience level normal, for this game I seem to have endless patience. I've gotten quite good, and with the four-suit difficulty, I've currently played 38 games, won 37. I'm on a 27 game winning streak.

Twenty-seven game winning streak? Does NASA know about this guy? The CIA? Maybe this guy should be overseeing the economic recovery program. Maybe he should be inventing the economic recovery program.

Or is it just that I'm so pathetic at the game -- current stats 174 wins... 1042 losses... winning percentage still a dismal 14% -- that Gary is the norm and I'm... well... stupid?

Or maybe he's pulling my leg?