Gossip

I grew up in the small town of Sackville, N.B.  Gossip existed.

It can start in odd ways.  Once this schoolboy was saying, "The only routes from New Brunswick to Maine are through Houlton and Calais." My sister said, "That isn't true!  My family visited Maine once, and we didn't go through either of those places." "What route did you take instead?" "I don't remember, but it wasn't either of those routes!" So a rumour got around that our family had a smuggling route across the border.

There was also this woman who spread the story that our mother had come to her with tears in her eyes asking her to get her own kids to play with us because we were so wild nobody else would.  I suppose you should feel sorry for such people.

Small towns can be terrible for gossip.  When Grace Metallious wrote Peyton Place, people in her hometown sensed that she'd been writing about them and weren't pleased.  So they started rumours about her, including one that she'd been out shopping in a fur coat with nothing underneath!

Speaking for myself, I don't mind if people talk about me behind my back.  It means they respect me enough not to talk about me in my presence.  I remember kids in school who'd see me coming and be reminded to talk about me. (Of course, when they quoted me they'd start by saying "He goes...") They were deliberately putting me down in front of me as a show of power, to establish that they had a higher status.  It wasn't fun for me.