Truth tellers
By PAT WICK
© Another Day in the Country
The headline caught my eye, in an old issue of Book — a magazine dedicated to all kinds of information about authors and their latest publications. It seems that Paul Auster was asked to do a project by National Public Radio for the weekend program All Things Considered, a year or so ago, and he invited people to send him stories for something called "The National Story Project." The ground rules were simple: it had to be short and it had to be true.
That's a lot like this column that I write every week called It's Another Day in the Country. Short and true. The stories that Auster received were so good that he edited them into a book called "I Thought My Father Was God." I've also thought about putting the segments of my story into book form. When Auster set about contacting all the writers — guess what he discovered? He found out that the writers had embellished things, changed things, added things — the stories weren't all really true. So, now are you expecting me to fess up to the fact that everything I write isn't true? Sorry, it's as true as truth can be coming from just one person.
I'm always reminded, though, how slippery an animal is the tongue, as the saying goes, or how elusive truth can be — especially in a small community. All you have to do is hear wrong or hear selectively and a whole new story is born which in book form is called fiction and in conversation, gossip.
We were sitting in a local restaurant the other day and listened to just such a story emerge. Two or three friends were chatting and someone mentioned someone else was sick. "With what?" came the conversational question, "Something to do with the liver," came an answer, "My cousin had hepatitis like that," came a comment and within 10 minutes, conversationalists and restaurant customers drifting in and out, Joe Blow had hepatitis and needed a liver transplant to survive.
"Whew," said my sister as we sat there eavesdropping. "Word of mouth can be something else!"
See TRUTH, Page 11
That's why we decided — before we ever moved back to Ramona — that the only way to really know something was to check it out personally with the person involved. It's become a rule!
And we've tried to live by another rule, our grandmother Schubert's rule, which was, "If you can't say something good about somebody — don't say anything." Sometimes this meant that Grandma was pretty darn quiet; but I'll tell you she raised her nine children with that creed and set a good example. She practiced what she preached.
I'd like to believe that her legacy is one of the reasons we all enjoy getting together as a family. You don't hear a lot of negativity at our family reunions and you do hear a lot of laughter. My oldest aunt still sets the pace for careful speech. As I've told you before she only calls her kin by their full name, no nicknames, and her long standing habit is to speak positively. If she's faced with some tough truth, she'll put on a tight smile, tilt her head and raise her eyebrows, and all that comes out is, "Well?" We all know what that means.
There are two sides of gossip. One side is the warm feeling we get from spending time with a friend or sharing stories about a mutual acquaintance — it's a little like reading news from Ramona. Good news binds people and communities together, it's how we share our collective identity.
The other side of gossip is the stomach-churning anger, shame, or frustration when you discover someone is spreading bad news about you — or especially incorrect, distorted bad news! We have a family story about such irresponsible gossip — someone miss-connected illicit drug use with our family name and when my uncle Al heard about it, he came up with a novel solution. His lawyer required the person who had perpetuated the story to take out a full page ad in the local newspaper to correct the misconception.
If you think you'll eradicate the rumor mill to clean up a town, you've got it the wrong way around. Gossip is inevitable and blameless — it's the content which reflects the person's mind and our state of health. They tell me that if you want to gauge the health of a person, a family, a community, or an organization — just tap into its grapevine and take a sample or two of the toxicity.
Well, it's another day in the country and I'm gonna follow grandma's advice. If you've got something to say, make it short, and make sure it's good!
