When Bad Rumors Happen to Good People
After spending most of yesterday evening trying to raise my sister via telephone-- and then realizing that she probably won't talk to me in absentia because out of sight is out of mind--I got to thinking more about her opinion with regards to the family. How they were, in her view, "leeches."
When I brought this up to my cousing Janice in our conversation the other night, she said "oh, I think that has to do with your sister not liking the family talking about her."
Family gossip is a way of life for us--alot of time it's negative speak because many family members tend to view the world in a negative rather than positive way. Could be the dyslexia, could be depressive upbrining--who knows. We are all, though, in some sort of Family Categoy. I exist in the Family Flake category, which consists of those of us that have gone to college, are gay, or have artistic talents (or any combination of the three.) Most of the Family Flakes live outside New Jersey, but we like to stay in the loop and sometimes breeze in and out for family functions (when they remember to invite us--sometimes they forget, but you know, out of sight, out of mind.)
I'd rather be a Family Flake than Bible-Thumping-Right-Wing-Militaristic-Family-Evangelical (that's my cousing Doug--he's in a category all his own). We have Family Jar-Heads, Family Druggies, Family Drag Racers, Those-Prone-to-Illness, the Multiply Divorced with Checkered Sexual Pasts, Former Hippies, General N'er Do Wells, the Uber-Family-Minded, and Family Nuts (the family euphemism for mental illness--schizophrenia to be exact. like dyslexia, it runs in the family).
But I know the type and kind of gossip my sister fears. It's not the family kind, which, while categorizing you, also forgives you for not straightening up and flying right like The Rest of Us. Her gossip is a particularly vicious kind, and I think this is what she projects onto the slap-happy Family Gossip. I have heard my sister sling just-this-side-of-the-KKK level invectives at blacks, Jews, gays (her own son is gay), the multiply handicapped (her own daughter is multiply handicapped), artists, musicians, New Agers, alcoholics, drug addicts, and anyone that she thinks is Not Right for one reason or another.
I've walked out of her house, on many an occasion going "criminey! I need a shower!"
I can't deal with visciously picking on another person for one reason or another. It's one thing to talk about a person out of concern, in an effort to try to come up with a way to help him/her, or even to get a consensus of head-shaking and agreement of "I just don't get it." And it is another thing to talk about someone in an effort to destroy him/her to make oneself feel superior. I encountered alot of that at Smith, which I wasn't expecting. It happened the first night I was there, when I admitted that my husband had left me for a 21 year old college student, and the other women in the room (no one of college age) thought it was funny that I couldn't keep my man. So much for sisterhood. And, over the years I was there, it just got worse--esp. when the gossip got to the point of being coldly calculated attempts to ruin the acacemic careers and the sanity of those judged Not Wothy of A Smith Education by others who considered themselves the Ultimate Illuminati.
From what I know, the principles of Universal Law state that "what goes around, comes around," So, the creeps I knew at Smith will get smacked by their own ill will one day. And I think it is this smacking that my sister fears.
You can run, but you can't hide.
Yet I feel strongly that she's got to put her mouth, her judgements, and her problems with The Family on hold while my mother lingers. Now is the time to shut up.
Family and Life
When I brought this up to my cousing Janice in our conversation the other night, she said "oh, I think that has to do with your sister not liking the family talking about her."
Family gossip is a way of life for us--alot of time it's negative speak because many family members tend to view the world in a negative rather than positive way. Could be the dyslexia, could be depressive upbrining--who knows. We are all, though, in some sort of Family Categoy. I exist in the Family Flake category, which consists of those of us that have gone to college, are gay, or have artistic talents (or any combination of the three.) Most of the Family Flakes live outside New Jersey, but we like to stay in the loop and sometimes breeze in and out for family functions (when they remember to invite us--sometimes they forget, but you know, out of sight, out of mind.)
I'd rather be a Family Flake than Bible-Thumping-Right-Wing-Militaristic-Family-Evangelical (that's my cousing Doug--he's in a category all his own). We have Family Jar-Heads, Family Druggies, Family Drag Racers, Those-Prone-to-Illness, the Multiply Divorced with Checkered Sexual Pasts, Former Hippies, General N'er Do Wells, the Uber-Family-Minded, and Family Nuts (the family euphemism for mental illness--schizophrenia to be exact. like dyslexia, it runs in the family).
But I know the type and kind of gossip my sister fears. It's not the family kind, which, while categorizing you, also forgives you for not straightening up and flying right like The Rest of Us. Her gossip is a particularly vicious kind, and I think this is what she projects onto the slap-happy Family Gossip. I have heard my sister sling just-this-side-of-the-KKK level invectives at blacks, Jews, gays (her own son is gay), the multiply handicapped (her own daughter is multiply handicapped), artists, musicians, New Agers, alcoholics, drug addicts, and anyone that she thinks is Not Right for one reason or another.
I've walked out of her house, on many an occasion going "criminey! I need a shower!"
I can't deal with visciously picking on another person for one reason or another. It's one thing to talk about a person out of concern, in an effort to try to come up with a way to help him/her, or even to get a consensus of head-shaking and agreement of "I just don't get it." And it is another thing to talk about someone in an effort to destroy him/her to make oneself feel superior. I encountered alot of that at Smith, which I wasn't expecting. It happened the first night I was there, when I admitted that my husband had left me for a 21 year old college student, and the other women in the room (no one of college age) thought it was funny that I couldn't keep my man. So much for sisterhood. And, over the years I was there, it just got worse--esp. when the gossip got to the point of being coldly calculated attempts to ruin the acacemic careers and the sanity of those judged Not Wothy of A Smith Education by others who considered themselves the Ultimate Illuminati.
From what I know, the principles of Universal Law state that "what goes around, comes around," So, the creeps I knew at Smith will get smacked by their own ill will one day. And I think it is this smacking that my sister fears.
You can run, but you can't hide.
Yet I feel strongly that she's got to put her mouth, her judgements, and her problems with The Family on hold while my mother lingers. Now is the time to shut up.
Family and Life
posted by Tish Grier at 12:16 PM
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