keep your shnaz to yourself?

I am a selective mental pack rat. I am not sure where this memory ability was when I was in college, cramming for my United States Foreign policy final, but nonetheless it has surfaced since. I have realized I learn and retain information that is not important for me to know and I hang onto it, somewhere below this shoulder length blonde mop I have. Why has it become a problem? Because I am now a constant thinker… and it is exhausting.

Solution? 2010 is the year of the mental de-clutter. I do not know how I will do this, nor do I know if it is possible to do, but I do know I will need to encounter one of my biggest demons: gossip.

I have had a love-hate relationship with gossip over the past 23.6 years. My naturally curious (and female!) personality yearns for the most up to date information on whatever perks my interest at that particular moment: intimate details about JT and Jessica Biel’s nasty break up? Yes, please! Interesting late night rendezvous revealed during an early Sunday morning fire alarm in Hulett? Why not! Newsfeed on facebook? Sure thing!

Having completely confessed to my dependence and intrigue for gossip, I have come up with my own social theory on this topic.

Gossip is like picking your nose, and here is why.

To the world, picking your nose is embarrassing, and being caught picking your nose is even worse. Those who say they do not pick their nose are flat out liars. They are scared of the social ramifications they will suffer if they admit to doing something that has been labeled to be so humiliating.

The reality? Everyone picks their nose. It is a natural reaction to a stimulus coming from your own body. You have an itch? Scratch it! Something blocking your nasal passage? Remove it. Am I the only person in the world who thinks that there is a reason your finger can even fit into your nose holes in the first place? I certainly hope not. The part that makes a difference is what you do with the booger after picking it (insert potty mouth booger joke here.) The mildly socially acceptable thing to do with the aforementioned booger would be to use a tissue or discretely dispose of it. The unacceptable thing to do would be to eat it, or as my brother prefers to do, flick it at an innocent bystander.

Gossip is like picking your nose. It is something that everyone does, but no one will admit to it because of the social ramifications it brings along with it. But just like picking your nose, gossip is a natural reaction to a stimulus provided to your brain. The part that makes a difference is what you do with the gossip after you have heard it, just like when you pick your nose. The choice you need to make is this: are you going to be the one to spread the gossip, essentially becoming a chain in the game of telephone, or are you going to keep it to yourself?

At the end of the day, everyone has both perpetuated gossip and halted it, so why is it perceived in such a negative light? If everyone does it, why do we associate negative traits to those who are “gossipers,” when in reality we all gossip at heart. Further, why is it socially acceptable for us common folk to pry into the lives of celebrities, but then feel so violated when our privacy is compromised?

Obviously this is still a working analogy, and I may have just confused myself completely, but this is step one of my mental de-clutter.

Think gossip is unnatural now? Well guess what…its snot!