Here's a story I once heard that just came back to me full of meaning yet again.

A woman went to her minister and confided meekly that she had been gossiping a good bit and she felt really bad about it and wanted God to forgive her for having said the things she'd said.  The minister was  understanding and told her to remember that we are all human and there are plenty of times that things fall right out of our very own mouths that we'd love to just grab in the air and shove back in again.  He assured her that God is loving and tolerant and forgiving and understands all of our human frailties and the challenges we face in life.  God would forgive her.  She felt much better, but was puzzled by what he told her to do next.

He said she did need to atone for her sins and that to do so, she must wait until the next wind storm came and then go outside into the wind and cut open a feather pillow, releasing all of the feathers out into the wind.  She must then go out into the windstorm with the pillow case and collect every single feather again and restuff the pillow.

She was agog.  Why in the world would she have to do such a thing.  He looked at her solemnly and said, "Because as impossible as that would be to do is how hard it would be to go out and reclaim all the words you have said that have since been passed on to other people who have passed them to others who have passed them to others."

I think it is safe to say that we all gossip to some extent or another.  At this point, mine generally take place around friends who I trust to be discreet.  I definitely learned my lesson about gossiping to people who are going to spread it around.  That just gets all kinds of complicated.   I don't think we often enough stop and think about the harm that gossip can do and the damage our words can inflict.  Usually that doesn't come into focus until we our own selves are the victims of gossip and find out first hand how much it stings when people tell outright lies about you out of maliciousness or carelessness. 

I recently had three different people who barely know one another come to me asking me to verify the most insane rumors that I guess are going around, all reported to come from the same source.  I had to about eat off the inside of my face to keep from laughing out loud at some of the things that were said.  For instance, did you folks know that Eric, my husband, is apparently the drug kingpin of Grizzly Flats?  Well, that's the reason why we had so much traffic coming in and out of our property this summer!  I'm not sure what he's doing with the money from all of his high end drug deals (Get it?  "High" end?)  because I sure as hell haven't seen any of it.  He must have it stuffed in a tree hole somewhere out in the woods.  Never mind that the people creating the traffic to and from our house were those hellcat drug fiends like Walt Tyler, Judie Irwin, Lynn Shetley and Mark Almer.  (Insert sarcastic smirk here, please - to my knowledge, none of those people are drug fiends)  We had a major fundraising event here on August 16th and a huge amount of planning and preparation went into it with committee meetings and work parties involving hoards of people going on a few times a week all told.  The Fire Safe Council practically lived at our house for 2 months (likely so they could all cozy up to Eric for the best drug deals, you know) and they all drive.  Nope, that wasn't it.  The traffic was from our bustling drug business because that just makes better, more interesting talk.

Lessee...  OH!  We are embezzling money from G FORCE, which is the only reason we incorporated as a non-profit corporation.  Yep, that's it.  G FORCE is where I launder all of that drug money into squeaky clean PG&E and Grocery Outlet funds.  Mind you, it had nothing to do with the usual reasons why a board of directors chooses to incorporate:  to be able to apply for grant money, to protect the board members should someone decide to up and sue G FORCE or to in any way legitimize our fund raising efforts.  It was all so we could take G FORCE's money.  Again, I have to say, "SHOW ME THE MONEY!"  If we were embezzling, I'd think I'd have my giant flat-screen TV by now instead of Jodi poking me every month because my $40 water bill is late again.

We also evidently kept all of the good wine that was donated to the Fire Safe Council BBQ for our own wino selves and served the crappy BevMo wine at the event.  Well, that's half true.  We did serve the BevMo wine at the event because - get ready for it - it's a fund-raiser!  This was a tough year for the wineries and wine donations were very limited as a result, so we sold the donated, super-nice wine by the bottle and served the cheaper, purchased wine by the glass as "house wine," or in this case, "back yard wine."  The rest of the wine was packed up and put in Norma Dawdy's wine cellar until the Fire Safe Council could figure out what to do with it.  Nope, didn't keep the nice wine and any we did keep, we paid for just like everyone else.  I don't even drink wine, so this was particularly funny.

What else, what else?  G FORCE is supposedly about to go down in a blaze of anti-glory now that we have new board members.  This was definitely the first I'd heard of this.  Always the last to know, right?  According to the rumors, because 4/5 of the founding board members had to resign due to personal circumstances after serving for a year or two, we're just done for and G FORCE is just straggling along on its last legs.  Truth be told, the people who are now on the board have even more experience at fundraising and event planning than the founding board did and are enthusiastically putting it to good use.  That's not to fault the founding board at all, it's just a fact.  Plus now we have a guy board member to lift heavy crap and run errands for us.  G FORCE, with its incorporation this year (so we could embezzle, don'tcha know) is moving ahead full force and doing great, excited to launch its Bingo season with a major Bingo Party and working hard to plan the Founder's Day community party for June of 2009.  If we're falling apart, none of us seem to be aware of it yet.

This one was good.  I heard that the reason G FORCE events were moved from Grizzly Pines School was because I (personally) had a falling out with Ms. Kelley.  Not true.  If I wanted to punish Ms. Kelley,  I would have kept G FORCE events AT the school and just dragged them out longer and made a bigger mess (ha ha).  Truthfully, the fact is that whenever we have an event at the school, we literally have to spend hours basically dismantling the school, setting up the event, and then putting the school back together again.  Also, when we have an event at the school, we are often unable to allow parking up around the school to avoid bottlenecking the driveway, so people attending the event end up having to walk up that big ol' hill and back down again if they forgot something from their car, then back up again and so on.  We cannot have alcohol at the school and we want to be able to raffle off wine baskets and have them for bingo prizes.  Also, any time we have an event at the school, Ms. Kelley is obligated, due to school district policy, to be there the entire time.  If she's had a full day of school (as when we had our bingo nights at the school), she ends up being at school for 14 hours or so in a day and that has to be exhausting.  If we have an event on a Saturday, we often times have to come back on Sunday just to put the school back together again, so that means she doesn't even get a weekend!  If we are able to have an event elsewhere, she can come as a guest and enjoy herself instead of always having to be hostess!  THAT's why the events, as many as we can, were moved.

(Anyone have a house they aren't using that we can rent for events?)

It's amazing the things you can learn about yourself by listening to the wind and all the voices on it, isn't it?  For the record, just in case you took any of my sarcasm seriously:

Eric is not a drug lord.  He's not even a drug demi-god, czar or mayor.

I'm not embezzling from G FORCE, although at one of the bingo nights, I did take a Mountain Dew without paying for it and I will remedy that at the next bingo.

We did not steal any wine from the Fire Safe Council BBQ.

G FORCE is going strong.

G FORCE events were moved whenever possible for the stated reasons.

Anything else is just flat out wrong.

I wish I was half as interesting as all that.  Anyway, I didn't tell you all of that just to point fingers or complain.  It is all just in case you're thinking that I'm the embezzling wino president of a failing corporation who's married to the local drug connection and dead set on being vindictive to the school marm.  I suspected that maybe some clarification was in order. 

Truly, after I got over the initial surprise and a sting of pride, I did find the whole thing funny, mostly with the guidance into the funny side of it by my Best Friend Forever, Jackie.  I'm grateful to the people who were smart enough to come to me for clarification instead of just believing everything they heard, which tells me that we have some really smart cookies living up here. 

But then, we knew that, right?

Be Very, Very Particular,