Friday, 27th March 2009
Gasping for Gossip
She leaned towards me across the aisle in the bus, tapped me on the shoulder (which she knows I hate), and treated me to one of her conspiratorial stage whispers. Do you hang your curtains in the washroom, or do you send them for dry-cleaning? Because despite the fact that you seem to wash such a lot of clothes and sheets and stuff, I never see any curtains....
Knowing that candid camera skits are all the rage of late, I looked around me for tell-tale signs of related undercover activity. There appeared to be none. So, I just breathed in deeply and said “Neither. I order new ones all the time, and when they come, I just chuck the old ones away...”
Her friend, squashed between her and the window, sniggered, and received a look that would have split the atom in return. The nosey parker sniffed disgustedly, and said, to no one in particular Imma kemm hi kiesħa din, and since then, has deemed me unworthy of any more of her attention – which suits me just fine.
This tiny incident reminded me of several others in which it was obvious that the people seeking answers did not want to know them so that they could help me out of a quandary or two. It was obvious that they needed some fodder for discussion the next time they went to the salon or to the corner shop for something they would pretend to have forgotten the previous time they would have gone.
There was a time when I worked outside the house; so a friend and I took it in turns to walk the children to their catechism lessons and back. One day, the other woman’s child innocently told me “Mummy says it’s impossible that you cook from scratch every day, because she doesn’t work and she doesn’t find the time...” It transpired that when it was her turn to take the kids, this child’s mother used to ask mine what they had eaten, upon returning home from school. The fact that the reply was never “cereal” or “toast”, annoyed this woman, who chose not to believe the truth.
Around this time last year, my mother died. Not even a week had passed, before people who had never bothered to say good morning before, began asking me the most personal of questions. This has not yet stopped – and the cherry on the icing on the cake came last week when I was told I had “no reason” to go to Valletta because “I had nobody left there”.
For all this lady knows, I have scores of relatives and friends who live in the City. And in any case, I never knew that I have to have relatives at Marsa to go there- which I often do since it is within walking distance of where I live, although not on the bus route.
Why are people so obsessed with digging, and then dishing, the dirt about others? Is it because they do not have a life of their own, and so they want to live ours, vicariously?
Why, indeed, do all the Hello-type magazines with pictures of Paris and Britney and Victoria splattered all over the front cover, sell as if there were no tomorrow?
When we were young, just for fun, we used to invent convoluted sentences for the game “Telephone”. By the time the words got to the end of the circle, the first person would not have recognised what he was supposed to have said.
This is exactly what happens to gossip – it gets distorted and changed, according to the whims, and the agendas, of the person who repeats it.
Gossip if the fodder of people who may have dirty little secrets of their own to hide – and they hope that by repeating malicious untruths (or even the unvarnished truth) about others, they will deflect the attention from their own doings.
Imagine, for an instant, that you saw someone standing next to the sweet counter at the shop. This someone makes a sudden movement. You think your own thoughts - but if you share them with others, that is the beginning of a chain of gossip that might later be sourced to you.... bringing serious trouble.
Gossip and rumours have much in common – the people who start either, or both, think that it will make them important in other people’s eyes, since they appear to “know everything”.
If the rumour has been confirmed to you personally by the person about whom it is, you have a double responsibility not to divulge it. In my line of work, it is almost par for the course that I constantly encounter rumour and gossip about people in the media. I usually refer people who ask me something about anyone, to the person himself – they rarely take up the challenge.
Some gossip malevolent, some is humorous, and some is inconsequential. I find it incredible that people would actually lie about others - yet, they do. This usually indicates that the gossip-monger is someone with a sizeable chip on his shoulder.
The rumour mill thrives on tattle. But if everyone refused to listen to gossip, let alone repeat it, the cogs would have nothing to crush, and they would jam.
The logic of it all is that people who are so keen to tell you gossip about others, will do the same about you, with them. It’s not just because you are part of a clique, and because it’s you lot against the world, that you thrive on gossip; it’s because you have “nothing better” to do, than tear people to shreds.
“They deserve it” are the words you say to salve your conscience when you let rip about personalities and self-styled celebrities who set themselves up for ridicule by wearing too much make-up and revealing clothes (and that’s just the men).
Ah... but would you have reacted the same way if that person you are disparaging had been a relative, a friend... or yourself?
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