Note that employees of All Too Flat were ineligable for the Writing Contest, but Ben decided to enter anyway and see if he could get away with it. He couldn't. But to keep the peace, here is Ben's All Too Flat inspired poem:

All I ever Needed to Know, I Learned on All Too Flat
   With apologies to Robert Fulghum

All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned on All Too Flat. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there on the website at www.alltooflat.com. These are the things I learned:

Share everything.

Play fair.

Don't hit people.

Put things back where you found them.

Clean up your own mess.

Don't take things that aren't yours.

Say you are sorry when you hurt somebody.

Wash your hands before you eat.

Flash the toilet.

Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.

Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.

Take a nap every afternoon.

When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.

Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the yogurt carton: The roots go down an the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.

Cats and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the yogurt carton - they all die. So do we.

And then remember Dick and Jane and the first word you learned - the biggest of all - HUGE.

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule (treat the others as you would like them to treat you) and love and basic sanition. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.

Take one of these items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or your government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if we all - the whole world - had cookies and milk at three o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankets for a nap. Or if all governments had a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.

And it is still true, no matter how old you are - when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.