TramaDramaRama

I love this painting. It took me a minute to notice that the people are actually in repeating order, not just two people gossiping, but person to person to person and so on. What is it about possessing a piece of information that causes it to sit and burn inside us, like a pending sneeze, begging to burst out?? It's compelling. Addictive. Sucks us in. Is anyone immune? Men, I think, by nature are much less prone to be gossip queens but are by no means innocent in this regard. Whether it's a piece of our own lives we can't wait to get out or a piece of someone else's life, it takes a great amount of self control to restrain ourselves from blasting it across the headlines.

I thought that the gossip gene was something I'd eventually grow out of, that I'd no longer care who said what and why and how. But alas. This is not so. I pretend like I don't care but, I admit, I do enjoy hearing the skinny. Unless it's just mean and tacky. I don't want to convey that I'm sitting around bashing on people. "Sharing of news" doesn't necessarily imply negative ninnies sitting around making caddy remarks about what everyone was wearing that day.

The gossip gene is clearly in all of us hence why they try to get us while we're young. I can't even name all the youth lessons and even adult lessons that have covered the gossip issue. I recall a demo/skit our group did at girls camp one year. We had a line of girls facing the crowd. The first girl took a sip of "water" out of a glass labeled "gossip". She mimicked the action of whispering the "gossip" into the next girl's ear and so on down the line. I got to be the girl at the end who received the "gossip" in it's final form. To demonstrate this, I was to then spit out my "gossip" back into the glass. Little did they know, I had a piece of melting chocolate in my mouth so when I spewed the remnants of the "gossip" out, it was a murky brown color. Lesson being, the more you pass it on, the dirtier it gets. Lovely story huh? To illustrate the Mormon-ness of this story, I have also included the wonderful Mormon-ad of gossip that we all know and love.

It intrigues me why our human nature, or maybe our modern Western culture, compels us to gossip. Why do we care? Though it often depends on the nature of the info. You don't hear whispers of who got new drapes this weekend and their controversal color. *Gasp* Oh, no she didn't!?! That witch!!! It's no secret that the more scandalous the information, the more interesting it is... especially when it comes to people's love lives. Seriously. Anyone who left home for college knows that the number one question you received when coming home for breaks was "Soooo, who are you dating...??" I wouldn't say that I have a gossip problem. More that I can see how gossip becomes a problem. I do make an effort to contain information (personal and otherwise). Maybe I'll just start letting it all out in a book with people's pictures in it, but then that has the potential to get copied and distributed throughout the whole school which then will necessitate an intervention with everyone involved... so I guess I'll steer clear of that option...