Talking

BEAVER CLEAVER got up a sandlot football team, and Wally, being Wally, offered to help coach it, promising to keep Eddie under control. They devised and practiced a secret play, about which Beaver blabbingly told a girl, who promptly told the other team, with disastrous consequences. Ward came to the rescue, as always, with a good teaching moment: "son, don't ever tell anybody anything, don't ever say anything to anybody, that you don't want to be repeated." Never has better advice been given to anyone, ever. Whatever you say to anyone, always assume that the person to whom you spoke will share the info with somebody else. If you don't want it repeated, don't say it. often people have gotten upset with me for repeating something they said to me. I am always willing to explain to anybody that whenever anybody says anything to me, the person has given me information, which now belongs to me, and I am therefore free to use it in any way I please, to do with it as I choose. You are of course free to ask me to keep a secret, but if you do, I'm likely to ask you why i should keep a secret, since you obviously can't. Sometimes I tell people things that I hope the other person will not tell anyone else. But if they do, I am always willing to take the consequences, and deal with them, without blaming the person who shared the information they got from me.Often, when I tell somebody something I would rather not be repeated. it isn't, and I am glad. It almost seems that in many cases there is an unspoken agreement not to repeat information. Whenever it happens that something we say is repeated, we should be angry at ourselves, not at the person we gave the information to. We are the ones who could not keep a secret. A little more accountability, sadly lacking in American culture, would be a vast societal improvement.