©Linda Goodman 1/8/17
On
January 1, 2000 I decided to make a New Year’s resolution. For the past several
years, I had been having a problem with gossip.
I listened to it, I spread it – it was like living in my own personal
soap opera. I was addicted to gossip. Once I realized the depravity of my
addiction, I decided I needed to take serious action right away or I would be
lost in moral turpitude forever.
Hence
the resolution. I knew, however, that
making the resolution, no matter how deep my resolve, would not be enough by
itself for me to make this change. I needed reinforcement, and so I decided to
pray, “Dear Lord, I don’t want my tongue to continue on its destructive path. I
cannot control it alone. Please help me to conquer this problem.”
It
worked. Whenever I started to listen to gossip, something would happen (a call
from a potential gig, for instance), and I would have to leave before the gist
of the gossip was clear. Whenever I started to spread gossip, the intervention
was on a greater scale. I would turn around and the person I was gossiping
about would be standing right behind me.
Or I would have a coughing fit before I got to the good stuff. Once, a fly flew into my mouth. Sometimes I would forget what I was saying, in
the middle of a sentence.
But the
granddaddy of all gossip squashers was an email that I sent to a friend who
planned to visit Virginia. She had contacted me to ask if I might be able to
help her find some storytelling work in the Richmond area, where I lived at the
time.
I
replied that Richmond was not the hotbed of storytelling that New England (my
friend lived in Massachusetts) was. “I hear that Richmond storytellers tend to
recite more that tell,” I told her. “That is what the local public thinks when it
hears the word storytelling. Nobody wants to pay to hear a recitation.”
How I
wish that there had been an intervention to stop me from sending that
email! I think God must have decided
that I needed to be put in my place. Several days after I replied to my friend, I
received an email from Pete Houston, president of the Virginia Storytelling
Alliance (VASA), saying, “Well, that was some epistle you sent out. I imagine that you’ve gotten quite a few
angry responses to that.”
I had
no idea what he was talking about. He explained that he was talking about my
response to my friend from New England.
“How
did you get that,” I asked.
“Everybody
in the storytelling alliance got it,” he answered. “You must have sent it using
the reply all key.” I knew I had not done that. My friend’s email
address was the only one to which my reply went. I checked. The email Pete had
received, however, showed the email addresses of all the storytellers in VASA
in the copy space. Even though I hit reply (not reply all), instead of going to just my friend, it somehow went to
every storyteller in central Virginia.
I did indeed
get numerous responses from the recipients of that email. I was so ashamed that
I did not open them for several weeks. When I finally did open them, I was
dumbstruck. I had sent an email based on something I had heard about, not
witnessed. Not even one of those
wonderful storytellers, however, took me to task for my mean sentiments and my
carelessness. Instead, they said that I just needed to get to know the Virginia
storytelling community better. They invited me to their guild meetings. They
called just to chat so that we could get to know one another better. A
storytelling theater in Richmond even invited me to become one of its members.
I got involved with VASA and heard stories that sent chills up and down my
spine, that made me laugh, and that touched my heart. Virginia storytellers are
indeed as good as any I have ever heard. What impressed more than that, though,
was how they were so willing and quick to forgive me.
Just
before I moved away from Virginia in 2013, I ran across another storyteller who
was relocating to the Richmond area. “I am not real happy about this move,” she
said.” I hear these Virginia storytellers are not that good.”
“That
is simply not true,” I told her. “You just have not seen enough of them to
realize how wonderful they are. They are talented and skilled and delightful. More
than that, they are generous, kind, and they cut you some slack when you make a
mistake.
I did
not break that resolution again (well, maybe once or twice) for the remainder
of that year. In fact, I am making that same resolution again – now.
