Do you do it with poison?
A gulliotine?
Or a gun?
There are many ways to kill another human being.
But what if I told you that I have discovered the easiest way to kill someone?
It took me the better part of a lifetime to realize it. Perhaps I instinctively knew it at a much younger age, but did not want to face the fact that I knew.
So what is all this I’m talking about?
I’m talking about the use of our tongue, of course.
If you want to try to kill someone, the best way to do it is to spread half-truths and gossip about them.
I’ve seen it done. A thousand times. I’m sure the reader has, too.
Of course, I’ve done it (I am ashamed to say) myself. And since the reader is a human, too … so have you.
Let me tell you a story here … as stories can often reveal to us the truth much more vividly and profoundly than mere cold hard facts.
One sunny summer evening back in the mid ‘70s, I was sitting at a booth in a downtown Bristol restaurant. Three other young adult male friends were sitting with me.
Unbeknownst to any of us, a former girlfriend of mine was already sitting (unseen) in another booth nearby us (a fact unknown to me until decades later).
This girlfriend and I had very recently broken up on sad terms. (How do any teenagers in love break up and it not be a sad thing to do?)
I’m sure my friends and I talked about all kinds of things, as teenage boys will do. No doubt that girls were part of our conversation that day.
Fast forward now twenty-two years. No longer 1977, it is 1999. I am teaching elementary school students as a career.
About midway through that school year a certain little girl enters my classroom as a new student.
I feel as if I’m in a time capsule. This little girl looks like the absolute “spittin’ image” of the aforementioned old flame from ‘77.
No wonder.
I was soon to learn that this little girl was her daughter.
Now I should mention here that I always endeavored to imbed some type of “life lesson” within virtually every academic lesson. I felt that children should not only learn science from me, but learn to be good and caring citizens as well.
A lesson I often shared was by our entire class playing what I called the “gossip game”.
This game would begin with me saying something like, “Alright, ladies and gentlemen, if I can whisper words in someone’s ear and then we all take turns passing those same words around the class by whispering in each other’s ear, and if those words come back to me at the end being exactly the same … I’ll buy us all an ice cream from the cafeteria at lunchtime today.”
I would write down my initial exact words on a piece of paper and lay it face down on my desk, to be picked up and read aloud to the entire class by the last student in the chain - but not before that last student had stood and spoken aloud the exact words she had heard passed on. If those words then matched exactly with the words I had written down, the whole class got ice cream.
Of course, the words never came back to me the same as I had originally said them. Usually they were not even close.
I came to see why there is little wonder that we humans tend to gossip so much. It seems we tend to inherently mishear, misunderstand, and misinterpret even the most basic factual information (let alone juicy social gossip), no matter how high our motivation may be not to do so.
This game would be ended with a life lesson regarding “being mindful of our words” when we are talking about others. I always told the class, “Words can hurt even more than sticks and stones.”
As I ended with those words that particular morning, I noticed that silent tears had formed in the eyes of my new little girl student.
So when we went out for recess later that day, I gently took her aside and said, “I saw tears in your eyes this morning. I am sorry if playing that game upset you. I apologize to you right now if it did.”
She then turned and spoke so softly to me that I could scarcely hear her. “It’s not me you need to apologize to, Mr. Talley.”
“Please tell me more,” I said.
I will summarize what this dear young child told me that day.
“Mr. Talley, my mother called the school yesterday to find out the name of my new teacher. When she found out, she was so happy for me. She told me you would be my favorite teacher I would ever have. But I also heard her talking last night on the phone to one of her friends when she didn’t know I was listening. She told her friend a story about how you hurt her a long time ago by saying something bad about her to a bunch of boys. She said she was sitting in the next booth when you all were eating downtown one day, but you couldn’t see her sitting near you. You told those boys her perfume smelled worse than she did. You made them all laugh so hard. It was funny to you all. But it hurt Momma so bad. I heard Momma say she began to think she really did smell bad and didn’t even date anybody else again for a very long time. Momma said she had never known you to lie, so she took what you told those boys as the truth about her. You hurt Momma so bad, Mr. Talley. She said your words made her feel like she had died. You tell us not to use words that hurt others, but you did exactly what you tell us not to do.”
All I could think to say was, “I need to tell you both how very sorry I am.”
I will write no more here regarding any further conversation I had with this sweet little girl and her dear mother (other than to say I willingly ate a lot of crow when I did so).
But if you are like me, dear reader, we do well to pause and wonder … how many people have we unknowlingly (or knowingly) hurt with our words?
Often we may never know the damage our tongue has done. I certainly would never have known how badly my careless words had hurt one particular dear soul long ago, had not Fate and a courageous little girl both intervened.