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I had a situation awhile ago where my daughter had two separate friend groups she was hanging out with. The groups liked her, but not each other. I think we’ve all probably been caught in the middle like that at some point in our lives.

Well, I heard her one time telling a friend how much a girl from the other group dislikes her. She gave her friend a detailed report of all the ugly things the other friend had said about her.

I didn’t say anything about it until later. But I eventually told her that I thought that wasn’t being a very good friend. She said, “Why? She has a right to know that this other girl really doesn’t like her.”

I haggled with her for a bit. I personally think a good friend lets somebody vent without passing it along—that a good friend sometimes doesn’t stir up pain, even if they’re only telling the truth. That was my daughter’s big thing. “I’m being honest and it’s all true,” she said.

I ended up letting it go. One thing about kids is, they make mistakes that we, as adults, have already done many, many times, but they’re not interested in hearing about that—they want to make their own.

I have run into all sorts of trouble in my life from gossiping. At my house, we sometimes call it “the hot goss,” which is a term we heard on a kids show one time many years ago. That term, “hot goss,” always cracks me up because it does embody what gossiping can feel like. It’s exciting. It’s spicy. It feels like you really are doing something that might burn you down the road.

Now, I should explain what I mean by gossip. My definition of it has expanded quite a bit. I used to think it only meant salacious stuff, like, “Hey, did you hear Heather and Mike broke up because Mike likes Michelle?” I used to love that. I loved being the center of information because it made me feel important and valued.

But these days, I have done a massive expansion of the kinds of things I would throw in the gossip bucket. The biggest addition would be s**t-talking people. For my entire life, I have enjoyed goofing on people, putting them down, making up funny nicknames and stories about people. It’s all part of a bigger issue, which is that I have an instinct that running down somebody else will lift me up, which is about my own lack of self-esteem.

I'm not great at avoiding that stuff. But I am a lot better now than I ever have been before. I just have found that when you s**t-talk somebody, it either gets back to them, or it boomerangs back on you because that can be bad energy to put out into the world. I’ve had a few times when I have said bad things about someone and they end up hearing about them, and those situations suck. You have that person pissed at you, and you also are left wondering about your friendship with the person who passed it along.

So I really do make it a goal of mine every day to do the bare minimum of anything resembling gossip. It’s such a good example of an instant gratification that goes away really fast, and then you’re stuck with the icky feeling that you put some poison out into the world, or even worse, that that poison might come flying back in your face some time.

So no hot goss from me. No lukewarm goss from me. And hopefully no cold goss, either.

This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:

OUT ON A ROAD TRIP, an elderly alcoholic couple stops at a roadside bar for lunch. They have a few and get back on the road, but after driving a while, the women realizes she's left her glasses on the table. By then, they had to travel quite a distance before they could turn around.

The man fussed and complained all the way back to the bar. He just wouldn't let up one minute.

Finally, they arrive, and as the woman gets out of the car to retrieve her glasses, the old geezer yells, "While you're in there, you might as well get my hat!

(Credit: AA Grapevine, January 2004, by Richard M.)

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