Ring Ring

Remember the game "Telephone?" You know, where you say something to the person next to you and then it gets whispered around the room and at the end everyone laughs at how much the sentence "I went to the store" turns into "I think you're a whore." Hardy har har.

Yeah, not so much funny as an adult.

I know that gossip is an inevitability. Everyone does it, even those who are the carriers of best intentions. But the problem with gossip is that the only way to stop it, is to STOP IT. Being someone in the chain of misinformation doesn't help the situation -- so the only thing one can do is just hang up the telephone. No chances to right wrongs, no chances to correct any missaid or misconstrued sentences. You just have to be upright and honest and stop.

As a young teenage girl, I totally had a problem with gossip. I loved it; loved to spread it around, loved to hear it, I had to 'know' everything about everybody. But as I matured through my school years, I put it aside. I preferred honest interactions that were uncluttered by unobserved nuances of who or what a person did or didn't do. This isn't to say that I became perfect, I enjoyed (and sometimes still enjoy) a juicy tidbit of information. I'm just saying that when it came to my dear friends, people I truly cared about, I dropped garbagy gossip at the door.

And the thing I hate the most is people who haven't done the same. It isn't 'fun' anymore to play Telephone. The differences get bigger and bigger as the chain gets longer and longer, but it isn't about who wore what wrong color on that particular day, but rather, people's lives and feelings. Entire friendships can be lost on a split-second misheard or misunderstood phrase. Maybe for some people the excitement is worth it, but not for me. So here is my apology to everyone in the world that was ever hurt by gossip; said by anyone, anywhere.

I'm sorry.