Do you have the scoop on someone that you hold over his or her head? Do you know something that they wish you didn't? Are you the type of person to make sure that this got you plenty of favors, or do you just keep these things secret and remind yourself that this is the stuff of best friends?

Have you ever spilled someone's secret? Was it on purpose, or for a point? Did you accidentally say the wrong thing in front of the wrong person?

One time I was mentioning a secret I knew without naming any names to someone I had just met. I was being really vague about the secret, but I just wanted to bond with this girl about something. She totally figured out what I was talking about and told all the wrong people.

Do you keep your big mouth shut or do you use secrets to your advantage?

-- Anonymous, September 15, 1999

Answers

Well, is it blackmail if you would never use it?

Recently, I have been in a situation where I feel I have had to apologize and basically grovel for something I did, almost a year ago. The thing that makes me angry about this situation is the fact that the people involved AREN"T PERFECT. And they seem to be forgetting that fact.

Basically, I know something about one of them that is, in my very so humble opinion, about 50 times worse than what I did. But I have never and have no intentions of ever saying: "You know what?! DID You know that so and so did THIS?!"

It's not my place. So, instead I continue to get pooped upon. OH well.

I'm sure this is a lil' more serious than you wanted, but it was the only one I could think of. Heh.

-- Anonymous, September 15, 1999

Offhand I can think of two times that a secret forced its way out of my mouth at the worst possible time, as if it were a small animal prying my lips open to escape. It's like my brain turned off, and my mouth flew open. And then to make it worse, instead of playing it cool like, "yeah, what I said just then? It's no biggie", I will instead be Ultra Spaz, clap my hand over my mouth and open my eyes wider than saucers like the guilty blabbermouth that I am. Fortunately they weren't big things. One was about somebody goofing off at work, and the other was about something non-earth shattering, but I still felt horrible. Deep, dark secrets I can take to the grave though. The little piddly stuff I have to swallow over and over before I can finally keep it down.

-- Anonymous, September 15, 1999

I know way too many secrets about many of my friends, family and acquaintances. However, there's a reason why people tell me secrets. Nuff' said.

-- Anonymous, September 15, 1999

i currently have blackmail of the best kind on soemone i work with..........but i am scared that if i leave it too long it reaches a "use by" date and just becomes embarrassing information. I am trying to save it for the best possible effect (the rabbit up my sleeve , or should that be ace?)but am failing each day in using it. How long can blackmial be effective for?

-- Anonymous, September 15, 1999

I'm sure that I let things slip out without even realizing it, but for the most part I try to keep my mouth shut. I don't want to really use any information as blackmail, I just have to know everything that is going on. I can't stand to be in the dark on anything. Of course, the key to being told something is to act like you don't know anything...

-- Anonymous, September 15, 1999

This isn't my secret that got told and I didn't do the blabbing but it applies...

I was satying with several friends at Rachel's family's house. Big family dinner. Rach's brothers and their girlfriends, her mom, nephews and the three friends all sitting around a big table laughing and eating. Then somebody starts teasing Kim, one of the friends, about the time she stayed up all night and cried about the rainforests. Poor Kim had been getting teased about this for years by then. Some deep, dark, vulnerable secret she shared with us and we all tormented her. So Rachel's doing the usual number on Kim about her beloved rainforests and then Kim just loses it.

"YEAH, WELL RACHEL HAS VERY SPARCE PUBIC HAIR!!"

*That* was Rachel's deep, dark secret--no longer.

No one ever teased Kim about the rainforest ever again. She had too much shit on the rest of us and now we knew what she was capable of.

-- Anonymous, September 16, 1999

I can keep secrets, and, like Optic's friend[s], it's often those who deserve me to keep my mouth shut the least that I have the most knowledge about. Sometimes I have documented proof, sometimes I'm just 'intuitive' based on a big pile of seemingly unrelated information from numerous and various sources.

I never hold it over anyone's head. I am intensely private and would hate it if someone spilled my secrets because they were upset with me over something. Do unto others, you know?

I've had a year's worth of e-mail stolen by some people who need lives and more constructive hobbies, but I'm circumspect even when I think I'm writing private e-mails, so they could have dredged up some old grouchinesses and cause trouble with my comments with friends months after the fact, but there nothing more damning than that. I generally have no secrets or skeletons, I'm just a private person and like it that way. I said it before the email theft: there are things that I would prefer the world not to know, but there's nothing in my past or present that is so secret and dangerous that it would cause me to commit suicide if someone erected a billboard in Times Square and told the world something I did.

I don't even complain about things that I should complain about...until I'm pushed to my limit, and that takes time. I'm quiet, fairly meek and mild, and I shrug off a lot of crap and give peopel the benefit of the doubt. You might mistake me for a doormat, but I do have a limit that will eventually be reached. Then you are in the shit. Currently at work, I've had an overbearing co-worker for about 8 months. She told me she was my supervisor, held a mistake I made the second week on the job over my head, threatened to go to HR with an unspecified folder full of documented 'misdeeds' that I'd supposedly committed, etc. Predictably, since she's a control freak and a bully, she stepped up her campaign and I just smiled and made a note of it and took care of the request and moved on. So I've documented her 4-hour-a-day and 3-or-4-day-a-week delegate-all-my- shit-work talk-on-phone-all-day-to-boyfriend two-and-a-half-hour- lunch activities for a long time now and THEN I saved a particularly rude, arrogant, insolent, evil and nasty bit of e-mail she sent to me berating me for not going along exactly as she wanted me to with one of her unreasonable (and non-standard company policy) power-monger requests. And I took this rude, arrogant, insolent, evil and nasty e- mail to HR and said 'this is unacceptable, I am here to work, not to be bullied, harassed and treated unpleasantly like this'. They *instantly* agreed, expressed that they were appalled and aghast and would take care of it. Well. She is in the shit in a big way. Any sooner, and they would have played psychology games and she would have just gotten more covert while they played mediators, and I'd have lost my temper and quit a decent job. I knew I'd be asked what I'd done on my own, so I went through all the normal channels and chains of command before going to HR, I documented her evil behavior towards me and got multiple witnesses, and now HR has an extremely anti-company-policy and anti-company-culture e-mail from her to me in her file, she's been dressed down appropriately and she's off my back. In fact, we think she walked out and quit today, but we won't know until tomorrow.

So I can hold my tongue and keep information for insanely long periods of time, both my own and that belonging to other people, and I generally keep my nose clean and try to do right by others more often than not. I'm not a goody-goody, but I think before I speak and bite my tongue a lot, I tend to be overly thoughtful and analytical about decisions, and I'm annoyingly slow to act when it involves possible negative consequences to other people or myself. So you could embarrass me, probably, but not do any significant damage. I have no poop worth blackmailing me with. That's pretty sad, in many ways, but... *shrug*... I sleep like a rock every night, if that means anything at all (I don't think it does).

On the other hand, I know who took revenge on a naive and gullible but evil boss by stealing money (pocketed a guest check every night rather than turning it in and turning over the cash received for the food sold) when they were a waitperson, I know who is in the closet (you can take that any number of ways), I know who has serious health problems they don't want everyone else to know about (trying to expand their insurance coverage to take care of their children when the inevitable happens), I know who is and has been in therapy (I was & I admit it freely...but not everyone wants to have that sort of thing shared with the rest of the world), I know who almost cheated on their loved ones and who did (the cheatee isn't close to me, obviously, or I'd be in a quandary), I know who sells and takes drugs (that'd be almost everyone), I know who doesn't pay all their taxes (see previous comment), I know who owns extra-legal firearms (semi- automatic weapons, actually, responsibly stored in a locked and almost inaccessible place), I know who has had abortions (no value judgement here, it's just a fact and it's their secret) and the list goes on. Some of these things aren't things to be ashamed of, necessarily, but they shouldn't be public knowledge if the person it involves or the people involved doesn't/don't want them to be. And you will NEVER hear the shit from me.

(Now we can talk in confidence Did you guess that we've been done wrong? Lies jump in queue to be first in line Such a shameless design Ah, thinks he's well screened from the man at the top It's a shame that his children disagree They coolly decide to sell him down the line Daddy's brainwashing time

He's a dodo, no no, didn't hear it from me

She's a dodo, oh no, you didn't hear it from me.

Ah, another do do, no, didn't hear it do-do, do-do, do...)

-- Anonymous, March 06, 2000