Day 258 - Secrets and Lies

by  val.pearl 

I don't like secrets. I firmly believe that a secret is only a secret when only one person knows it. As soon as a second person knows, it isn't a secret. But that doesn't absolve me of the responsibility to keep secrets when they are shared with me.

In the work I did for the State Department, I needed to know some secrets, even when I didn't want to know them. I think I do a good job of compartmentalizing what I know so I can keep secrets, but I don't like to have the responsibility. If I can't remember what is a secret, I consider everything about it secret. 

Government secrets are only shared on a need-to-know basis. Fortunately, most of the work I did for State could be better described as need-to-share. And now I work for an office at State that promotes knowledge management, knowledge sharing, knowledge transfer. It is a good fit for me.

People whose work, perhaps even their lives, depend on keeping secrets seem to think others, even those who have no need to, are keeping secrets from them. I have met many people while working at State who thought I wasn't telling them everything. Perhaps I wasn't. As I mentioned before, I choose not to say some of what I think if I think the result will be hurtful to someone else. But if only they would ask me about their thoughts and conclusions. If I knew what they were thinking, what they were telling others about what they believed I was planning to do, I would have told them the truth.

The truth. That seems like such a simple concept. Either a statement is true or it is not true, right? And what is not true is a lie, right? And when a statement that hasn't been verified is shared with someone else, that is a rumor, right? And spreading rumors is wrong, right?

If only it were so simple.

Let me tell you a story about someone I knew at one of my overseas posts, someone who tried to keep his private and professional life separate, to keep some things secret from everyone else, but I kept being dragged into the middle.

This someone, Jack*, had a position of responsibility at the embassy with many people reporting to him. Some liked him. Some did not. I liked him, so I had a hard time understanding why anyone didn't. But I couldn't change the facts. A fact is like truth; it just is.

As Jack's assignment was coming to and end, we expected him and his family to begin planning to leave. It was summer, the usual transfer season. But instead of making plane reservations and requesting their things to be packed up, Jack did nothing. 

Summer brings with it the embassy's annual July 4th event. When I asked Jack if he would be in the country for that event, he answered that he didn't know. He said he had some personal things to take care of and he would let me know later what his plans were.

Then I heard from someone else that Jack's wife had said she wasn't leaving that summer. The next question, of course, was had I heard anything about problems between Jack and his wife. I hadn't and I was not about to continue speculating without asking Jack. So I did.

Jack's answer was that since his wife had only started working for her employer within the past year, she did not want it known in the office that she would be leaving soon. It was for that reason that she had not answered the question someone asked her while she was at work with the truth. She had replied with an answer that she wanted her employer to believe. It was also in some way a statement that asserted her independence from the State Department assignment system that assumes all family members will move as a unit from place to place, that spouses (most of them wives) will settle for whatever employment options are available in each place, regardless of the spouse's education, skills, knowledge, and abilities. I could understand those thought, but I wanted to be sure that Jack understood that people would come up with their own explanations for his reluctance to share his departure plans. I predicted that the explanations others would come up with would be much less complimentary than whatever the truth was. Once again, Jack told me it was his business, not mine, so I dropped the subject.

The next time I heard anything about Jack's departure plans, it was from a local employee in another country where Jack had previously served. Alex and I made a quick weekend trip to that country where I also had served. The local employee told me Jack and his wife were adopting a baby from a neighboring country. I corrected him and told him that Jack and his wife had already adopted a baby from that country, a little boy. But the local employee then told us he already knew about the boy. Now Jack and his wife were planning to adopt a little girl, too. They hoped all the arrangements could be completed before they had to return to the U.S. because it would be far more costly if they had to return from Washington.

The curtain rose on Jack's private matter. Now I understood. When I next met with Jack, I told him what I had heard. I congratulated him, and asked him why he was keeping the plans a secret. Again, he said it was a private matter that was no one else's business, especially since it wasn't certain the adoption would go through. He asked me to say nothing to anyone else, and I agreed.

But the next day, one of those people who didn't like Jack told me that she, too, had heard about their plans to adopt a baby girl. I told her that Jack and his wife didn't want people to know and I asked her not to tell anyone else. Her response surprised me. She told me that Jack's maid is the person who told her about the adoption when they ran into one another at the grocery store. Her conclusion was that if Jack's maid was telling people, then there was no reason for her not to do the same.

Jack despised rumors. Now that one of the people who wasn't one of his fans knew about their adoption hopes, I knew there would be rumors. And although I was convinced that no one would think any unkind thoughts about the news, I knew Jack needed to know that others would be talking about his private business. So I told him. I also told him I had told no one, but I don't know that he believed me. 

I really hate secrets.

*not his real name

Day 322 - Good Secrets/Bad Secrets

Sharon put down the book. She didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Laughter would be aimed at herself for being so naive. Crying would be for any of her classmates or other students who had gone through the same experiences as the author of the book she had just finished reading. But maybe he was the only one, she thought; although her real hope was that no child would ever have to experience predatory actions from adults, especially from a teacher.

The book was a novel, but the author indicated it was based on events from his childhood that he had kept secret from everyone. Sharon knew the teacher was Mr. Crawford, her fourth grade and favorite elementary school teacher.

Sharon had felt she was special to Mr. Crawford, but not in any shameful way. She thought he considered every student in his class special. She had considered him special, because he had taken the time to verify that Sharon's inconsistent grades were not the result of her not knowing the material. Sharon needed glasses.

When Mr. Crawford handed out problems to solve or tests on paper, Sharon got most of the answers right. He had consoled her when tears filled her eyes whenever her grades weren't what she expected. It had always been that way. Tears came all too easily for Sharon, the source for the nickname her classmates gave her: Cry Baby. Mr. Crawford told her that her ability to bring tears to her eyes so easily might be a talent she could develop later in life. She could be an actress. Actors need to be able to display emotions at any time. He was the first teacher to give her encouragement, to see her ability to bring up emotions easily as a positive thing and to encourage her to develop the ability to control her emotions for the right moment, instead of just telling her to stop it, to grow up and quit behaving like a baby.

One reason Sharon's grades disappointed her was that Sharon couldn't always see arithmetic problems on the blackboard clearly enough. If the problem involved words, she could figure out what she couldn't see by what she could see, but when the problems involved numbers, she couldn't always figure out what the shapes were. So she made mistakes, lots of mistakes. Fourth grade was when multiplication and division were introduced, so there were lots of number problems to solve.

One day as class was about to be dismissed, Mr. Crawford asked Sharon to stay. He told her to stand in the back of the room while he walked to the front and raised one of the maps that covered a section of the blackboard. On the board were several arithmetic problems. These were all completed, so it wasn't like a test. But the problems were a mixture of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

Multiplication and division had been difficult for Sharon and the plus sign for addition looked so much like the times and division signs from the back of the room. Mr. Crawford asked her to read the problems. She admitted she was guessing as she read. Sometimes, if she could see one of the top numbers and the bottom number, she could figure out the other number and whether the problem was addition or multiplication.

After Sharon completed reading the problems to Mr. Crawford, he gave her a note to take home to her parents. He told her he thought she needed glasses and suggested that her parents have her eyes tested.

Sharon's mother was surprised when she read the note because she knew the school administered eye tests each year and no one at the school had indicated Sharon's vision might need correcting. But no one had ever asked Sharon if she understood what the eye test was for. She knew it was a test, so it was just one more time when she wanted to get all the answers right. Sharon didn't remember if she did anything to make sure she answered correctly.

The eye chart in elementary school wasn't like the one in optometrists' offices. It only had the letter E on it. Sometimes the E was correct, sometimes it was backward, sometimes it was lying on its back, and sometimes it was standing on its three arms. Students were supposed to point in the direction the arms were pointing. It seemed like a game.

When Sharon had her eyes tested in a doctor's office, it was clear that she needed glasses. The day after her exam, she told Mr. Crawford she was getting glasses and asked him not to tell anyone in the class. She wanted him to keep her secret so it would be a surprise when she arrived in school the next week wearing glasses.

Now, five years after Mr. Crawford's death at 82 years old, she learned that at least one of Mr. Crawford's students saw a very different side of him. Even when Sharon's mother told her that Mr. Crawford had left the school district, moved out of town and there were rumors about the reason for his departure, Sharon hadn’t asked for details. If they had been important, she thought her mother would have told her. Sharon assumed the reason for his departure was that his marriage was troubled and any talk of divorce among the teaching staff at that time was scandalous. It was only now, after reading the work of fiction that developed characters along troubled paths as a result of a teacher’s inappropriate touching, that Sharon learned the real reason for Mr. Crawford’s departure. Instead of separation and divorce, Mr. Crawford remained married for the 44 years until his death.

Sharon couldn't stop remembering the good he did. She thought about all the crime shows on TV about child predators and the message in them, repeated again and again, that such people could never be cured. Once a predator, always a predator. Sharon wanted desperately to believe that was wrong, that at least one man who acted inappropriately with at least one 9-year-old child did find redemption though counseling and a 44-year-long marriage.

Sharon thought about her own grandchild, still several years away from going to school. She thought about how important it was for parents, for grandparents, for all adults who care about children to pay attention to unexplained changes in a child’s behavior and to talk with the child. In addition to reminders not to accept candy or rides from strangers, children need to know they should tell an adult they trust if ever an adult – not just a stranger, but any adult – does or says something that makes them feel bad or uncomfortable.

Maybe if the schools had done more to explain the difference between good touching and bad touching forty years ago, Mr. Crawford would have known his students wouldn’t keep quiet. Maybe then he would have restrained his urges and remained that special teacher for Sharon and his other students.

Maybe the author breaking his silence about the secret he kept for nearly fifty years will help other adults and children talk about good secrets and bad secrets, as well as what is good touching and bad touching.

No child should ever have to face the shame the author hid. Maybe that is the best outcome Sharon could hope for.