Small Town Secrets

My blog stats are up again, since yesterday I wrote about an associate of that pack of Freeporters known here as Frumpy, Dumpy and Lumpy. They must have alerted her, and so today I have lots more clicks than usual. Once again, all I did was call a spade a spade, and in so doing outed someone for a minor infraction that was important only to me. Still, the truth is often met with disdain.

Here is why honesty is the best policy: because someone is always watching. This fact is brought home in a haunting novel I first read in the 10th grade entitled "Too Late the Phalarope," by the esteemed South African writer Alan Paton. In it the protagonist, a lovely and endearing family man and community leader, is brought to ruin by his own inability to come clean about who he really is. Eventually, a watcher in the shadows tells his truth to the world.

I am not a watcher in the shadows, and in fact I am kind of afraid of shadows and thus would never be hiding in them. But I do see what's what and have few compunctions about outing people who have done wrong, and by that I mean done me wrong. Not always, of course, and a few confided secrets have been safe with me for 30 years or more. (If you ask nice, I won't tell.) Still, I'm wondering if I dare change the name of this blog to "Freeport Place" and divulge some even juicier stuff...