That's obviously a huge overstatement of the issue at hand.

It is. But it's hard not to feel that way. (I'm not claiming to be logical about this. It just makes me sad that we've moved so far from the "it takes a village" concept.)

ETA: Java mostly said what I was feeling:

I think that someone who's acting creepy and hanging around a playground eyeing the kids should be dealt with on a case by case basis and that these flat, unilateral ways of dealing with an issue just cause more problems.

Yeah, strangers can be creepy but study after study shows that kids are far more likely to be molested or harmed by someone either in their own family or close to the family. So I sort of feel like WTF about ticketing people eating donuts on a park bench.

Thanks, sj. That makes sense.

They should make a law making it illegal for kids to be around me. It would just save time. I could make dispensations, but normally, ILLEGAL. I could give out badges to allowed kids. FBi. Federal Bureau of ita.

Man, today was much stuff. Got lots of phone stuff done, important stuff, requirements gathered and documented and conveyed, so that's good. I'd probably still be working, but they took my laptop for upgrade to W7.

My boss has been correcting my pronunciation of a name, so I went to her because I just couldn't get it right, and I thought if I heard it from her lips it would sink it--but she says it like I'd been saying it. He's wrong. What do I do? She says to leave it be, but I don't want to. I will be awkward, trying to mispronounce right. But he's made such a big thing over how he's right and I'm wrong, and now! Oops.

Someone else on a call pronounced my name exactly right. Said she'd "been told". Apparently her boss had conveyed the crisp "t" to her during the meeting preparations. Hee.

Why is Skeet Ulrich in last night's episode of L&O:LA? Didn't he die? TiVo says it's new.

But it's hard not to feel that way

Does it help to consider the other half a million places where it's perfectly normal for you to stare at strangers' children? It's only one thing.

Fwiw, I wasn't trying to be provocative. It was honestly just my immediate emotional response to hearing about the incident.

Personally, I have mixed feelings. Of course kids are actually mostly at risk from people they know, but on the flip side, I haven't seen that kind of rule anywhere that wasn't a specific area just with playground equipment, so.

Awww, Pix. Feel free to spend as much time with my kids as you ever want. Go ahead and borrow them while you're at it. They'd only benefit from your presence.

I fully admit that a week of dealing with my personal Tino has made me more sensitive to everything. Let's just pretend I didn't say anything. Move along people, nothing to see here...

I always thought that rule was less for sex offenders than for teenagers. I have seen much older kids take over playground spaces and make it uncomfortable for little kids to be there. And the response was always something like "Fuck you, we have a perfect right to hang out here." Well, now they don't. And I say this as a teenager who loved hanging out in playgrounds.

A bunch of hulking 17-year-olds whose aim is to intimidate can be a real playground buzzkill.