Secrets

I don’t have any secrets.  Seriously.  I have this overdeveloped sense of guilt and responsibility, and if I’ve done something wrong I end up confessing it to God and everyone else.  I need absolution, and my method of self-flagellation is in confessing myself.  Other things that people would keep secret, I end up thinking are great stories, and I tell them.  Oh, there are things I don’t just talk about on principle of what’s good conversation, but I’m not hiding anything. (Granted, I haven’t done anything that truly requires hiding.  There are no bodies.)

My mother always says that the only way to keep a secret is not to tell anyone at all.  Since this is nigh on impossible for a talker like me, I just don’t keep secrets.  My secrets that is.  I don’t keep my secrets.  I probably won’t keep yours either, but I’ll only tell B and my mother.  They won’t tell anyone else.

Secrets are high pressure.  If you feel the need to press the release valve and share with someone else, it is unfair to expect them not to feel the same pressure and need to share.  So, if you don’t want everyone to know about something, don’t tell anyone.  Especially good news!  Everyone wants to tell good news.

I have managed to keep some pretty big secrets, usually involving an engagement or a great present, then it’s a letdown because I can’t dance around and say, “I knew it all along!”  I get this from my grandmother, by the way.  The only thing she hated worse than having to keep a secret was not being the one to blow the secret to kingdom come.