Of course you hate gossip. So do I.
If someone told me that Justin, the department hottie, was going bald, I wouldn’t look.
If I overheard rude boy-comments about Veronica’s pants, I wouldn’t peek.
If Josie couldn’t find anything on her piled-high-with-everything desk, I wouldn’t whisper snidehoods about cluttered minds.
That kind of gossip is spiteful, deplorable and detrimental to all that we hold dear.
I also miss it so, so much.
The pandemic is killing gossip. An antiseptic screen isn’t a water cooler. Justin may’ve gotten a mermaid tattooed on his head – but we won’t know. We don’t know if anyone’s even wearing pants.
So where has all our schadenfreude gone, our pleasure in other people’s misfortunes? We can’t see what’s germinating on Josie’s desk. We don’t know who’s got a secret stash, or who smells like a goat.
Do we get along better now that we don’t know each other’s foibles? Are we glad that we’re not distracted by flirtations or feuds or bad hair days? Are we?
Maybe we’re better people. But geez, we are so boring.
