Don't tell me

Vision Board Highlight: I can

'I can,' is a pretty broad statement, and it is on my vision board more than once. To me it is a reminder that I can do anything I put my mind to. Right now, I'm making a conscious effort not to say anything that isn't nice about someone else.

"Those who gossip to you, gossip about you." I'm sure you've heard that saying. I think my mother would remind me of that quote, but I can't be sure. We could count on hearing her voice, even coming from another room, "Are you girls gossiping?" if she heard our conversations being even remotely gossipy.

I can honestly say, I never heard my mother say something bad about anyone. However, once I did hear her saying a certain teacher should not be teaching at a high school with his rude, sexist, etc. behavior. She didn't really bash his character in front of us, she thought his behavior to be inappropriate and taught us that we shouldn't tolerate behavior like that. (She did share that sentiment with the high school principal as well, which my parents only did that one time, as far as I know, out of all five of their kids schooling.) The only other time I can remember her getting worked up like that was when she got some VERY bad customer service at a store, I forget which one. But, she didn't bash the lady, she just kept saying what customer service should be like (the only job she ever had was in retail after she got married, so she felt strongly about customer service). You just didn't hear my mom complain about other people or what they were doing, or say unkind things about others, it just was not her. She always gave others the benefit of the doubt, and John is really good at that too. He also won't repeat stuff he has heard to me, because he doesn't want me to alter my opinion of a person based on that. I have tried to get him to tell me stuff, and he won't. He's so good.

I remember when this talk was given in General Conference in 1999, another phrase my mom started using was, "Is their name safe in our home?" She also always said, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all." Seriously, we heard these things a lot.

Once I was visiting my parents (probably about two years ago) and my sister told us that someone we knew was pregnant, and then my mom said, "I know of someone else that might be pregnant too."

We were like, "Who?"
"I can' t tell you because I don't know for sure if they are or not," she said.
"So. Just tell us," I said.
"No, that would be gossiping. I shouldn't have said anything at all."
"Mom, if you tell us you don't know for sure if they are or not then technically it is not gossiping, and I don't even live here, so not like I would tell anyone," I said trying to get her to crack. She didn't. She was that serious about not gossiping.

I was that serious about not gossiping once too. I was in sixth grade, and you know how sixth grade girls are, mean. Well, one of my friends, Cassandra (names have been changed to protect the innocent and not so innocent) kept talking about another one of our friends, Michelle. I told Michelle that Cassandra had been talking about her, and she didn't believe me. I devised a plan, so that she would believe me. That night, I got my dad's mini tape recorder, a blank tape, and packed it in my back pack. The next day during reading time, with the tape recorder under my shirt I approached Cassandra on the reading carpet and proceeded to record her on tape talking about Michelle. It was that easy, and I was that sneaky. Then I played it for Michelle, who then got mad at Cassandra, who then got mad at me, who then told her mother, who then told our home room teacher, who then went with the mother and told the principal, who then called me in her office. I almost got suspended people! It was the wrong mother to upset, seriously.

Just think if we went around thinking people were tape recording us talking about someone else and that it would get back to them, how nice we would all be.

I have been really trying not to gossip, not to judge, and not to say unkind things about people. I've been doing pretty good, but I can do better. I really don't enjoy being around people that are judgey and gossipy, that negativity literally sucks the life right out of me, so I don't want to do that to someone else either. I can be gossip free, my mom was proof that a human can do it. So, I can too.

There is so much good in the worst of us,
And so much bad in the best of us,
That it ill behooves any of us
To find fault with the rest of us.
(Hazel Felleman, sel., The Best Loved Poems of the American People [1936], 615)

You can help me. If you don't have anything nice to say about someone, please don't say it in my presence, and don't you allow me to say it either. You have my permission to call me out! Please, hold me accountable. Feel free to pull out your tape recorders and put them on my table. Seriously.

I want your name to be safe in my home.