Chinese Whispers

There’s this situation at the school gate.  With another mum.  Her son isn’t in the same grade as either of my kids, but I know her by sight.  I’ve maybe said hello to her a couple times as I’ve passed by and that’s it. But I’ve heard so much about her I could fill a whole exercise book.  Maybe even two.  It’s not very nice stuff, either.  It’s not stuff I want to know.  And I’m sure it’s stuff she doesn’t want me to know.  Is it true?  I don’t know.  Even if it is true, what am I supposed to do with this information?  I really don’t know.

My daughter started Brownies this week and I was reminded of two games that I loved to play when I attended (you know, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth).  The first was the chocolate game.  Everyone sat in a circle and a family-sized block of Cadbury Dairy Milk was eaten with a knife and fork, one square at a time until the person beside the lucky chocolate girl rolled a six on a die.  Then it was her turn to eat up until the person beside her rolled a six (what’s not to love about that game?  Though, these days I forget about the die and the knife and fork and simply keep the family-sized block of chocolate to myself – you learn all these shortcuts as you get older).  The other game I loved was Chinese Whispers.  I adored this – with someone whispering a phrase into ear of the person next to them like, ‘Her dog barked all night long’, then the message being passed around the circle from person to person until the final player repeated it aloud, ‘We all ate dog tacos in Mexico’, or similar.

Sigh.  Chinese whispers reminds me of my little school gate problem this week.  Sometimes motherdom can be complicated, yes?  Brownies was a lot less complicated.

Still, sometimes Chinese Whispers can be fun.  Mum B, Mum C and I have all heard some little Whispers about ourselves recently.  Some of them have been right and most of them have been wrong.  In the spirit of how Chinese Whispers is supposed to pan out, we thought we’d come out and put a couple things right.  So, here goes nothing…

True: we’re all hot

False: we’re all bloggers

Fine, okay.  So maybe we didn’t hear anything about being hot (like anyone doubted that for a minute!).