Day 29 – Friendly Gossip Or Not

Today morning I got a message from a friend that she wanted to talk to me if I was free. So I called her thinking she wanted to talk about something important but I couldn’t be more wrong !! She wanted to discuss how one of our common friend’s husband has recently been laid off. I knew this for quite some time and was quite upset about it. I politely told her I was aware but didn’t want to talk about it. She ignored the second part of the sentence and was pretty upset why I didn’t tell her. Once again I told her it wasn’t a happy news that I would want to share with everyone. And most importantly there is nothing to talk about it. She pretended that she didn’t hear it and started to give me some juicy rubbish about the whole situation. I was honestly not interested and I’m generally very uncomfortable with such gossips, but all my protests fell on deaf ears. I cut the conversation short on the pretext of being busy.

Half an hour later, I find my Watsapp flooded with messages. I open to see and I’m extremely horrified to find one of these ladies have created a separate group since the first group has the friend whose husband has lost his job. So they are spreading the word fast. 

While I’m not close to these ladies, we have occasional potlucks and dinners. I’m in a very uncomfortable zone. I find what interests most of these ladies is of absolute no or little pleasure to me. But just for formality I become a passive listener. I hate myself for doing it.

This whole situation has left such a bad taste in my mouth because this is lowering the standard of gossip a little too low.