Sex, Lies, and Videotape...or in our case, "True Friends, Gossip, and Text/Instant Messaging."

I'm not quite sure what I want to say here, but I know I want to say something...you see...I learned some interesting things tonight. Perhaps I should start by listing a few of them.

I learned:

• who one of my true friends are
• gossip is lame
• word travels fast in our text/instant message world
  
• there's a lot of room for interpretation (or mis-interpretation) when it comes to communication via text/instant message
• gossip is lame
• apparently not many people know me as well as I thought, otherwise they wouldn't have carried on like they did
  
• 
  oh yeah, did I mention that gossip is lame?

After reading the above, some of you will be wondering, "What the???" But others may have an idea as to what I'm talking about. I hope the majority of my regular readership fall into the first group and are like"WTF?" But I also hope that some of the latter group reads this as well. I think they may find it enlightening.

So basically a friend of mine (lets call him/her Sam seeing as how that's a somewhat neutral-gender name) approached me tonight with a question. Sam had heard some things that were being passed on via gchat about me and wanted some clarification. These things seemed kind of stupid to Sam so he/she figured he/she would just go to the source. Coincidentally enough, our conversation took place through the very same medium that this gossip was being spread--gchat.

Overall it was nothing serious, just a silly miscommunication and a few things blown out of proportion, but it was highly disconcerting to me and to Sam that people would spread this story that they had heard some three or four people removed.

Being a good friend, Sam didn't mention any names or details about who was talking or what they were concluding about me and my character from this story of half-truths. (I'd rather not know the who/what). But the mere fact that people were talking about me as if they "knew" something firsthand when they clearly didn't, and as if it concerned them when it clearly didn't made me feel sick. I feel like I learned an important lesson regarding gossip tonight.

In conclusion, I would hope that all of us be more like Sam. I would hope that we would choose not to participate in conversation that slanders or assumes certain things about a persons character. I would also hope that when we hear something out of the ordinary said about a friend we would say to ourselves or aloud, "Wait a minute, so-and-so is not like that!" and then go talk to that friend and ask the truth.

Thanks for being a true friend, Sam.