Christina Littlefield
Disclosure is an interesting thing.
I don’t know why exactly, but people tell me stuff all the time — stuff I don’t need to know, stuff I shouldn’t know, stuff I don’t want to know.
The phrase “that’s more than I needed to know” is a commonality in my vernacular.
With my closest friends and family, it usually applies to intimate details that I don’t especially need or want to know about. Like for some reason, my best friend from home and my brother like to share details about their sex lives. First of all, I’m uncomfortable with the very fact that they have sex lives. Second, I don’t want to hear about it.
Since I also seem to get into similar conversations with random acquaintances from work or class, it may be that I really am that easy to talk to. Yet something tells me they just like the shocked expressions on my face as I try to handle what they are telling me in a mature and nonchalant manner.
Then there are the people I live with. Personally, I am glad we are open about everything, but some of our conversations have definitely sailed off the beaten path of normally discussed topics. Some of it is downright scandalous. We are probably keeping the Peppervine alive just by what drifts down to the courtyard from our third-floor apartment.
My family is equally open about everything. I may not want to know about how my father’s bowel movements are, but by golly, he’s going to tell me about it. He often feels the need to make known his well-orchestrated process of relieving himself each morning.
My point in sharing these intimate details is to show that you would think people would stop telling me things. I am, after all, a journalist. I have a column that is based on my experiences in everyday life. There is a pretty good chance that anything my family or friends say or do is going to end up as fodder for an article.
At times, this has gotten me into trouble. My mother is still upset with me for a column I wrote last spring about overhearing my parents in bed. She’s even embarrassed to come to my graduation for fear that she’ll be connected to the article.
Though I joked that the experience was traumatic, I also said that it showed me that my parent’s were still into each other after 24 years of marriage. That their commitment to each other had spanned the test of time was worth writing about, though it meant disclosing a lot more information that many people might think is appropriate.
My inherent tendency to be open about things does not mean that everything someone says to Christina Littlefield the person gets shared with Christina Littlefield the reporter. Although my list of taboo topics gets shorter every day, I still exercise restraint in what I choose to disclose or not disclose. Still there is a very good chance that newsworthy, intriguing or just humorous details will end up in print.
You would think that this would make people cease and desist in crossing the line of “that’s more than I needed to know.” But it hasn’t.
They still share. I still listen. And you, you get to read about it.
March 21, 2002