Remember to play nice

Wasn't that the last thing your mother always told you as you ran out the back door to play with friends? It's what my mother always told me. She darn well expected me to do it, and I darn well knew the consequences if I didn't.

The Playfriends appointed me "Playground Monitor" so I could keep folks in line. Uh, I think it has to do with the fact I'm old enough to be their mother.

Occasionally I put on the "Mommy Hat" with the Playfriends but it's usually about something like making sure you get your mammogram or having a will to protect yourselves and your children. I haven't had to do any monitoring since the Writing Playground's inception. Everyone, including all our wonderful commenters, have played real nice.

I wish I could say the same for certain folks in celebrity-dom. Between the fight for a certain blonde's embalmed body, the head-shaving antics and revolving-door rehab attendance of a not-so-hot-anymore pop star and the recent naughty photos of an American Idol contestant, there's been an awful lot of not-so-nice playing going on. People are being hurt as a result. Parents are embarrassed. Children are affected. The public is disillusioned. Simon's going to be devastated and somebody's going to be in Randy's dawg house.

There seems to be a lot of Too Stupid To Live Syndrome going around. Haven't these folks learned that America soon tires of their antics and the courts don't like frivolous lawsuits? Did no one learn anything from the Miss America who lost her crown over photos taken years before? Hello!

I also see posts on websites and blogs that come back to bite the poster in the backside. When we began the Playground, I wrote some authors I knew and asked for suggestions on blogging. The one piece of stand-out advice I received was this: "If you wouldn't want it to be on the front page of the New York Times, don't put it on your blog."


The blogosphere is bigger than the New York Times. It is out there for the world to see.

THE WHOLE WORLD.

They don't call it the world wide web for nothing.

And the whole world, well almost, has visited the Playground.

Look at all the places our visitors live. They're all over North America. The dot that obliterates Hawaii is from one of our RWA chapter's newest members who moved alllllllllllll the way from the Aloha state to Alabama. We've had visitors from Central and South America, there's nice representation from Europe, a few dots in Africa and the Middle East, folks in India, the Orient and Down Under. And way up there in the north-central part of Eurasia is a dot that may or may not be Kazakhstan. Borat maybe?

We thank you all for visiting and hope you'll visit again and often. We love having a full playground. We also like having toys on the playground, and look at our new toy!

Because my mother also told me to share my toys, one lucky commenter today will receive one of these spiffy Writing Playground ballpoint pens.

Tell us a little bit about your part of the world.