Gossip

Seventh grade science was a most memorable class.

It was Miss Miller’s first year to teach.  She was an odd-looking little teacher, quiet and unsure of herself.  Our class had far too many rabble-rousers to make it enjoyable for her.  Miss Miller had no idea how to keep order and the energetic boys took full advantage, running the class as if they were in charge.  Some of them were always in the restroom, missing the teaching as much as possible.  Miss Miller never seemed to catch on to the fact that they didn’t really need to go.

A few of the girls were wild, as well.  Rhonda brought chocolate chip cookies to class one day and made a point of telling the female half of the class not to eat any.  Turns out, she had used chocolate Ex-Lax in her batter resulting in the boys having, for once, legitimate reason to run to the restroom.

The day we played Gossip in class was the day all hell broke loose.  As part of a science lesson, Miss Miller asked that we play the game in order to see how easily words could be misunderstood and transformed.  My parents had taught me that gossip was not a good thing and that it was hurtful to the person being discussed.  Could a game by that name be any better?

Pam was the first to gossip, by whispering something to another student.  Those same words were repeated, one student to another, until the person at the end of the line said the words aloud.  The idea was to see if what came out at the end was the same as what was started at the beginning.

I should explain something, however.  Pam was a very sweet girl, but she had an unusual way of talking whereby she drew out or over-pronounced certain sounds, especially the letter r.  It’s hard to explain, but she simply did not talk like anyone else in the class, so the boys made fun of her.    

Pam’s sentence got passed around the room, going through all those boys.  There was no way to tell who was responsible for what came out at the end, but when it got to the last student, Cindi, she stood up and said, Pam is a whore.

Some of us, Cindi and me included, had never heard the word whore before.  Pam understood it, however, as did the boys.

“Cindi, I hate you!  I’ll never speak to you again!” she shouted and ran out the door while most of the class erupted into laughter.

Miss Miller stood at the front of the classroom, wringing her hands.  Cindi was crying, and I had absolutely no idea what was going on.

It took Miss Miller thirty minutes to get Pam back in class, with the room in an uproar the entire time.  When everyone finally quieted down, we learned that what Pam had actually said was, Math is hard.  Because of the way she pronounced the letter r, the word hard probably did sound more like the word whore.

But still….

Miss Miller changed careers because of my class, which is just as well.  I don’t remember any of the science that she taught.

On second thought, though, maybe I learned a far more important lesson from her:  all gossip should be avoided—even if it’s just a game by that name.