I've Got A Secret

Anyone who has ever asked me to keep a secret will probably agree that I am pretty good at it. If you have a secret that you would like to leak, I am not the person to tell, because most of the time it will not get any farther than me. I’m no Scooter. In my world there are three secret rules:

1. Don’t tell the secret.

2. If you do tell the secret, admit it.

3. If you do tell the secret and do not admit it, you must take your denial with you to your grave.

Similarly, in my world secrets have certain parameters that prevent them from being outright lies:

They must be for a specified length of time – there must be an end date when the secret becomes common knowledge

They must not involve lying or crime (unless it is a lie that will stop when the secret does like denying being pregnant until the three months are up)

They must be told to fewer than three people to be considered “secret.”

Sometimes people tell secrets (like “I think I accidentally kissed my best friend’s boyfriend when I was drunk”) hoping that I will take that information and do a little judicious investigating (like “So, did anything strange happen at the party last night?”) and then report the results back (like “ she said ‘I have no idea, I was so drunk’”). But I’ve never been much of an investigator because I’m always afraid I’ll blow the secret, and when it comes to other people’s dramas, I like to stay on the sidelines. Plus, as long as you don’t do any investigating, you don’t become part of the situation and you can sit back and watch it play out (like when the boyfriend finally remembers what happened and trots it out mid argument with his girlfriend who then comes by to drop the hammer on her former best friend).

The first real secret I asked the HP to keep, he blew. We got engaged on a Sunday night right before I left on a business trip. We agreed that we would tell our parents in person the next weekend. We went down to my parents’ house on Friday night and told everybody, and then the next day we went to his parents’ house to tell them. Little did I know, he had already spilled the beans to them, but instead of telling me, our little secret became their little secret (and it did not conform to my secret parameters as described above). When I found out months later that the whole “engagement announcement” had been a charade designed to keep me from getting angry, I was angry. I would say that I was five times angrier than I would have been if he’d told me the truth, but if he had told me the truth in the first place, I probably wouldn’t have been angry at all, because I knew he told out of overwhelming happiness not sneakiness. Clearly, if he had told his family and they all had agreed not to tell me, they should have at least followed Rule #3. (If you were able to follow the preceding paragraph, I commend you. If you were not, I apologize to you. At least it is a demonstration of what tricky business secrets can be.)

That was my first introduction to my husband’s family and their trouble with secrets. Like many people, they don’t tell secrets for gossip’s sake, they tell secrets because they are either overwhelmed with enthusiasm for what is going to happen or overwhelmed by the need to plan for what is going to happen. When they buy someone a gift, they are bursting to tell about it from the moment they leave the store, because they can hardly wait for the happiness that it is going to bring. When a surprise visitor or party or outing is in the works, they often absentmindedly reveal the surprise because they love to discuss plans for future things they are going to do. However, when seriously asked to keep a secret, they will make a concerted effort (usually successful) to resist these impulses. Once released from their promise they will describe the stress they were under, and the energy they needed to suppress the urge to talk, and all the times that they almost blew it but didn’t. So to be kind, we usually only tell them secrets of very short duration.

The next three secrets that my husband and I agreed to keep, he had to keep or risk an atomic argument. Having started out our marriage with the Engagement Secret Incident, I found it very hard to believe that he could keep any secret, but when I became pregnant with each of our kids, he did (as far as I know - his family may have learned rule #3). In fact, the lengthy explanations that I subjected him to time and time again about why he must not spill the secret were probably more than adequate payback for the Engagement Secret Incident.

Of course once the kids arrived, I remembered that kids like secrets more than anyone, and our kids are no exceptions. Aislinn doesn’t so much tell me secrets as tell me things quietly (like “I’m still hungry” five minutes after dinner or “Can I have another treat?” while the candy is still stuck in her teeth) in hopes she’ll get a different reaction than she would if she said them out loud. Lauren secrets are usually things that everybody knows, but that she thinks are so special that they should be said in a special way (today it was “Diego and Alicia don’t just save animals that are in trouble, they help them find their mommies,” pausing to put a hand on my arm and smile angelically “and daddies”). Marty’s secrets are my favorite of all. In the manner of many small children, he takes my head in his hands to turn my ear toward him, then uses his palm to push my hair out of the way, then leans in close and breathes heavily two or three times while trying to think of something to say (today it was “Is this song going to be over?”). Really, they could all tell me secrets all day and I wouldn’t mind; I like being the person they chose to confide in, even when they’ve got nothing to confide.

These days, as far as I can think of, all of my secrets are the ones I am keeping from my kids (Santa, the Easter Bunny, the tooth fairy – and technically, if Aislinn and Lauren find out before Marty, four of us will know the secret, in violation of my secret parameters). My parents never had to worry about spilling those secrets to me, since my best friend’s parents decided when we were in kindergarten that they were sick of pretending, so they told her about Santa Claus and she told me. I think my kids will probably be relieved to find out that these jokers aren’t real since they are completely afraid of them (in our version of Christmas we meet Santa out on the lawn and bring the presents in). The main thing that keeps me from telling them is that right now I can blame Santa if they don’t get what they ask for at Christmas.

So my dear friends and family, in conjunction with the secret rules and parameters described above, I have decided now to let you in on what I have been doing for the past month or so. If you read The Beginning you will find out why I started writing this stuff, and now that you know, please do not feel I am expecting you to read all of this. It started off as a secret endeavor because I didn’t know how it would turn out. If I only had 10 days worth of essays in me before writer’s block took me by the arm and sat me on the couch in front of the TV, well I really didn’t need everyone I knew to be a witness to that. I guess I could have written them all and kept them on my hard drive, but by posting them, I could challenge myself to keep up with the writing. This little blog is the reason I never know about the news, never know what’s on TV, never send prompt e-mails (I’m talking to you Mrs. Berlin), and never get to bed before midnight.

On the few occasions that I write about people other than myself, the HP, and the kids (excluding the producers of ER), I am not trying to hurt anyone’s feelings (and obviously, I am not trying to hurt the feelings of the HP or the kids either, but they are stuck with me). If anything you read here makes you feel that I am being rude or disrespectful to you, please don’t keep it a secret. Ask me for an explanation or to reword something that you think is making you look bad (and bear in mind that the people who read this either don’t know you, or know you and like you already). I am the only one who should be looking bad on these pages.

So that’s my secret. I hope you can find something entertaining to read here. Some of it is crappy, and some of it is funny if I do say so myself. None of it has been edited or even really reread very thoroughly so please forgive the rough edges. Maybe next year I’ll start a new blog called “A Year In Editing,” featuring cliche removal and tense matching. But for now this will be as ambitious as I get. Thanks.