Ssshh ...

Snooze tagged me a long time ago with a meme that required me to name three unknown facts about myself. I honestly meant to do it but was so challenged by the whole notion of what to reveal. I somehow had forgotten until recently, that when I'd first begun blogging, I'd sent out an announcement to a whole bunch of people in my address book. As I later found out from random e-mails, people with whom I'm only vaguely acquainted are reading my blog surreptiously. It led me to wonder who exactly I'd told about my blog. Six degrees of separation being what it is, I figured one of my mom's good friends would probably end up at my site. The thought was a sobering one.

Beyond that though, I think I have a whole set of neuroses around secrets. I grew up in a household where pretty much everything was a big fat secret from the entire world. When you are raised in that kind of climate from birth, you just develop this habit of compartmentalising things and facts, and even yourself. Hence, we always had a public face. What went on behind our closed doors, of course, was quite another thing.

I remember this scene from the movie Body Heat. Kathleen Turner kicks her lover, William Hurt, out of the bed so she can change the sheets before the maid comes for the day. Naive Willie asks he why she just doesn't let the paid help do her job, to which Katie responds that she doesn't want her seeing the stains on the sheets. "Knowledge is power," she maintains in her smoky voice. Willie comments that the saying wasn't meant to be applied in that particular way.

Now, while I do know the true intent behind the meaning of that saying, I still am very much like the Kathleen Turner character. I am very careful about what people see and know about me because I can't really shake that concept that my parents beat into me at a young age which states that you must hold your cards closely lest someone use that information against you.

What I later discovered though is that no one really likes a secretive person. Sure, they respect and trust someone who is capable of keeping a secret, but there is a distinct and palatable difference between a discreet person and a secretive one.

What I've also discovered is that most people aren't discreet, and a lot are too stupid to be secretive. I've got some secrets that I'll take to my grave, and they're not even secrets that necessarily apply to me. It's just that if I promise someone I'm not going to say anything to anyone, I believe in standing true to that promise.

When I was in university, I was seeing this one particular guy. For whatever reasons, after we'd meet up secretly, he'd more or less make it obvious that he didn't want anyone to know about us. There weren't really any nefarious reasons for the secrecy, such as a girlfriend in the picture; I think it was more that he didn't want to appear serious with any girl and he was worried that I was going to cramp his style somewhat. True to my word, I didn't tell a soul, not even my close girlfriends. Much later, I discovered that he'd been just too proud of his conquests to keep it to himself, and a ton of people knew about us through Mr. Loose Lips himself. It reinforced what my parents had told me -- you can't always trust everyone.

I'd like to think now that I'm better about the whole aspect of secrecy. I am pretty open about a lot, but sometimes it's not always appropriate to tell all to absolutely everyone. Would I want some of my colleagues knowing about my private life, for instance? Probably not.

So Snooze, I think it may be awhile before I actually post that meme, if I ever get around to it at all!