I know of a few random members of society who cashed in on their dubious relationships with famous people to make a buck or grab their fifteen seconds of fame. Kato Kalin wrote a picture book about his life mooching off the Simpson family, Paris Hilton has written a book (and a sequel, a sure sign of the Apocalypse) about inheriting an ass-load of money from her parents, and of course the most famous of them all, the daughter of the No Wire Hangers psycho made all the money her mom didn’t leave her in the will with her tell-all about the famous actress-slash-drunken child abuser.

But lately, more and more people in my life have been cautioning me not to write about them on my blog. That must mean that A) they must think I’m really influential and my hordes of minions hang on my every word, and B) that the people in my life think that they are, in fact, more interesting than they actually are.

Case in point, a month or so ago my mom and I had nearly hourly conversations in which she updated me on the status of my dad’s kidney stone. Apparently when you lodge a sharp pointy object in the nether regions of a vital organ, it hurts. There’s screaming involved, and from what I could gather through all of the barely-muffled profanity in the background of every phone call, the only way to get through a kidney stone saga is to invite angry drunk people over and let them just shout strings of obscenities all day. That had to be what was happening because there’s no way any parent of mine would ever use THOSE words. That dream was dashed when my father’s voice rang clearly through the phone: “I’d better not read about this on your f***ing blog!”

Scenario number two: my daughter, wonderful perfection that she is, should be used to me documenting every crucial aspect of her life by now. I’ve been doing it since she was born, following her every gurgle and burp with my camera in hand. So when we decided she could shave her legs for the first time this summer and she heard the beep and whir of my digital camera behind her in the bathroom, she didn’t even turn around. She simply stated, “Mom, please don’t post these pictures anywhere. Can this one thing PLEASE stay between us?”

I don’t see why people around me are adverse to having their every mundane activity posted on my blog. It made me laugh, so why wouldn’t the lives of others be enriched by their comings-and-goings? Granted, kidney stones and adolescent leg hair may not be as interesting to the sufferers, but I’m thrilled to near-speechlessness that it was them and not me who endured these tribulations. And now, so are five billion internet users.