I am not a nanny, a coach, a grade school teacher, nor a referee. I am a private citizen who decided one day to provide a place for people in Saline County to have a sense of community. It was my hope that ideas would be exchanged, friendships would be formed and groups of county neighbors would become active toward good causes.

Well, Wednesday was pretty doggone thankless, and it made me wonder why I'm doing this anyway. I got several online messages, emails and phone calls from various members of MySaline.com, who, for the most part, aren't new to the site. In not so many words, I was asked to break up fights between people, put folks in the corner, discontinue someone's membership, and retract some comments that I didn't even make!

I don't make the kind of money from this that even covers my costs. I rarely get a fringe benefit other than a smile or the feeling that comes when you've helped someone. I stay up late nights working on projects, answering questions, formatting pages and writing stories. I go to my day job as usual and get that done until a break, when I weed through the MySaline emails and do an abbreviated version of the work that will again await my arrival at home in the evening.

We all have days like Wednesday, right? Where the burden sits on one end of the see-saw and knocks the benefits clear across the playground and into the jungle gym. I was disappointed in people. I felt stepped on. You know the feeling where you can't lift your head up, and you press your lips together until dimples form in your cheeks, whether you normally have them or not? Maybe you'll understand what I mean when I say it's the feeling like that man-beast in Star Wars Episode IV must have gotten, when a younger Obi Wan waves his Jedi hand and tells him, "You want to go home and re-think your life."

The subject approached was whether a person applying for public aid should be tested for illegal drug use. On Tuesday morning, it was four pages of comments, and by the time I sat waiting on my son's evening guitar lesson to finish, it was fourteen pages. The comments were paragraphs long, and I couldn't catch up in the small amount of time I had available that night.

It was the next day that I began to hear about the things I hadn't read yet. I still didn't have time to read it all. Remember? I don't get paid diddly for doing this, so I have a day job (a darn good one too, in case the boss is reading this). Maybe I should make those "Please Donate" signs a little larger and blinkier, but so far, they're just taking up screen space.

At any rate, I wasn't happy. I wanted people to behave like adults, and it really wasn't my job to get them to do so, except that they were kicking up dirt on my playground. Okay, Saline's playground. But I provided it. Later that evening, it finally came to me. People take paths, and those paths make lines. The lines aren't straight, and eventually, inevitably, those lines will cross. Some will get tangled. Some paths are planned and some are indeterminate.

On Wednesday, there became a ball of squiggledy lines that a few folks got their toes stuck in. I'm happy to provide a place where people feel a sense of ownership, so that when something does get tangled, it's going to get passionate.


See more of Shelli's columns! http://www.arkansite.com/notes/Shelli's_Columns