"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." - Eleanor Roosevelt

I love living in a small town except for one BIG drawback. The gossiping. It's incessant. I left the city because it is so anonymous. You never know your neighbors. The traffic is soul-sucking. And constantly meeting new people opens people up to being rude, knowing they probably won't see them again. All of the reverse is true for a small town, except that everybody's in your business non-stop. You can't have an affair in a small town, which is good, so it doesn't attract those that might. But it does attract gossiping. At my old job, they used to have the decoy of prayer chain. That was really not to pray for someone, but just to have it quickly pass to the next with commentary. And now with social networking, Facebook, I found out a high school girl died in a wreck before her mother did...

The girls here start gossiping early. My youngest is in junior high, and the 'native' girls are always starting rumors, and often either complete lies, or partial lies. It's extremely irritating. I am trying so hard to rise above, which I can do on my better days, but then there are weekends like this past one, where I am having to count to 10 a LOT. Or 100. It helps that I work in a different town, because when I worked here, it was much, much worse. They even drive by your house to see where you live. And then tell you they did. It's kind of comical really. As soon as I move, they are all driving by, and checking it out. It's strange that someone cares... but then I always liked to have a lot of guy friends because they are so simple and easy to figure out, and honest. Most women will not be honest with you, and then stab you in the back. It's tiring. My mother used to say that if you end up with 5 loyal female friends as an adult, you should count yourself lucky.

Amen, mom...