Dear Auntie Mac,

I love the “Swap Shack” at the Transfer Station and visit it every Saturday.  Recently what was “swapping” in there though was gossip – a lot of it – highly personal with specific people in Hampton named. I’m a firm believer that “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure”, but there’s no room for this particular garbage in there. Please help me spread this word.

Against Swapping Gossip

My Dear Neighbor:

Your story reminds me of an incident a few years ago. Lars rushed into the house pale as a ghost, his Swarovski FieldPro binoculars (a Christmas present from me, in part as thanks for dealing with an unpleasant rodent experience) clutched in trembling hands. “I was trying to catch a glimpse of a vesper sparrow in the woods when I saw a young couple across a field kissing.” I think I must have raised an encouraging eyebrow, for he continued, “and then, all their clothes came off!”

“But how could you be so sure?” I asked.

“Well,” he said, gesturing at me with the binoculars, “I saw it all myself, didn’t I?”

Auntie Mac is the first to confess that she is hard pressed to vacate the swap shack when some discarded bauble catches her eye and is blocked by five or six equally determined treasure hunters. However, she gently suggests that you may have spent a few moments too many in pursuit of your trinket in order to overhear enough to provide you with both context and outrage. Like Lars, you did not flee at the first salvo–we all, at some point, bend to the salacious, regardless of best intentions and noble thoughts.

There are certainly times when overhearing something necessitates a call to action. If one of the visitors had said, “Let’s plan to burn down Mary’s house tonight at 11:30; I’ll bring the gasoline,” you would have a duty to notify first the transfer station personnel and then the authorities. However, if you heard “Mary is a sniveling weasel and watches too much reality TV,” your best course of action would be to forego that glass vase in the corner and step out of the building until the coast, as they say, was clear.  It is probably too much to hope that a stern, albeit well-meaning lecture from you will keep these people—or anyone—from curbing the temptation to besmirch the reputation of someone not within earshot.

Gossip does not begin, nor does it end, at the door to the swap shack. Auntie Mac believes that when wrongs are witnessed, it is always appropriate to address them, but that involves a degree of courage that few of us possess. As long as this is the scene in which you have set your morality play, however, you might employ an effective dispersal method that goes like this: (loudly) “Excuse me, I really must get through. There is a darling plastic donkey on the bench over there that I absolutely have to have. Do you mind terribly? Thanks ever so much. Lovely weather today. Don’t you just adore shopping here? Oh my, what is that right behind you—could you move over just a scoche? These books are collectors’ items!  Listen to this…” and begin reading from Paradise Lost.

Yes, we should not gossip about each other. No, it isn’t helpful to say unkind things about people, especially in public places where meanings can be misconstrued.  But the transfer station is no more a magnet for boorish behavior than one’s own living room, and sadly, a public edict requesting kindness and consideration—even at locations as venerable as the transfer station—will hold little sway with those whose contentment depends on disparaging others. Your own good example is a welcome first step towards civility.

Your Auntie Mac