Babble

“Can you keep a secret?”

“Nope. Not at all. Why would you even ask me?”

“Okay, so- wait, what? You can’t keep a secret? Dude, that’s sad.” 

“Hey, it’s not sad. I just…. I don’t know. They make me…. itchy.”

“As your friend, I have to help you with this. You have to be able to keep a secret. That’s part of life. You keep secrets. You tell little, white lies. You know, that kind of stuff.”

“I don’t do that. I don’t like secrets. Lying makes me kinda nauseous. I would rather live a life that didn’t have any secrets or anything in it. I don’t like having to go into a conversation thinking about who knows what and who can’t know what.”

“It’s not that hard once you get good at it. It just becomes second nature. I mean, I have a bunch of things that I’m not supposed to tell you. I don’t think about it every time that I look at you just like I don’t think about all of the things that I know you don’t want me to tell other people.”

“Wait, there are things that you’re not telling me?”

“Of course there are things that I’m not telling you. I have other friends. People have opinions and they say things and they want people to keep those things secret. Confidential. Like I said, part of life. No one’s going to tell you anything if you can’t keep a secret.”

“I just don’t like doing it. I can’t do it.”

“Now I’m worried about the things that I told you that I wanted you to keep secret.”

“Yeah, those are probably out already. In the world. I mean, I say so much stuff to so many people that no one probably noticed. Sorry about that. Or maybe I forgot that they were secret and then just forgot that they were important at all? Like-”

“I’m going to stop you there. This is sad. You can’t exist in the world without knowing how to keep a secret. Knowing how to lie a little. It sucks, but it’s true. Let’s… I don’t know, practice. What if I told you a small secret? Could you go the rest of the day keeping that?”

“Definitely not. I don’t want to tell anyone, it just comes out. My face does this weird thing where it looks like something inside of me hurts. I mean, it’s kind of true, like I know something and that something doesn’t like not being shared because that’s mean-”

“To who though? It’s definitely wrong to the person who’s secret you promised you wouldn’t tell.”

“I mean, if it’s a bad secret, like one that makes me feel bad, then I’m going to tell it.”

“Well, that’s different.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean ‘why’?”

“If we’re keeping people’s small secrets, and someone’s small secret makes me feel gross, then why is it different if I don’t keep it? And what’s to say that gross for you is different from gross for me? Gross for me is having to keep a secret in general. So is that ‘different’?”

“No. It’s not. Because your gross is different.”

“What does that mean?” 

“I don’t know it’s just different. Come on. Stop being so weird. Let’s try to practice. You’ll hear lots of weird secrets in your life. You should know how to hold onto them.”

“But how many weird secrets do you actually end up holding onto? I mean, you tell me about half of the weird things that you hear from other people, and most of those things have a ‘you didn’t hear it from me’ at the beginning. Weird secrets are basically meant to be shared.”

“It’s-”

“I swear, if you say ‘different’-”

“But it is! If it’s really weird, sometimes you need someone else to help you sort through what you heard or were told.”

“Oh, so you needed my help sorting through what you overheard in the grocery store yesterday?”

“Yeah, because that was strange. No one needs that many cartons of eggs without some nefarious purpose in mind. I wanted to see…. what you were….thinking?”

“Sure. Sure. But you do it all the time. I mean, it’s stuff you hear in class, it’s stuff that other people have told you that they shouldn’t have told you. No one is keeping secrets. Why do I have to learn to?”

“Because you do.”

“Do I, though? I mean, then should you as well?”

“I told you, I keep a lot of secrets. There are lots of things that you don’t know.”

“There are also lots of things that I do know, and lots of things that you let slip when you think that I’m not paying attention. I bet you that I know everything that you think you’re hiding.” 

“Nuh- uh.”

“Sure. Tell me one thing that you think I don’t know.”

“You really think that that’s going to fool me?”

“Worth a shot.”

“Okay, but what if you get a really important secret that you have to keep, like one that is super important to keep quiet?”

“Odds are that if it’s that important, other people will be in on it, and I’ll talk to them if I need help holding it in. Also, if it’s super important, I’ll find a way to get through it without giving up  my moral compass.”

“Your ‘moral compass’? I’m asking you about keeping secrets, not killing the queen.”

“Yeah, but it’s still exclusion, and lying to some degree. It can get complicated if you do it wrong.”

“Every time that I’ve seen you try to keep a secret, it’s gone horribly wrong.”

“Point proven. Wait- so why are you trying to tell me one now if they all go so badly?”

“Why not? I mean, it’s kinda fun to watch you deal with it the way that you do- you act like you’re some kind of spy with information that none of us are privy to that you have to guard with your very life or something. It’s ridiculous. This one is actually kind of important, though.”

“I hate that picture, thank you so much for sharing it with me, and you know that you can tell me your secret, right? I’ll try really hard to keep it if it means that much.”

“After this whole conversation? Never.”