"I hope you don’t mind me asking, but 'is your family all healthy?' Just checking out of concern..."
This was in an email from a friend. Suddenly asking a cautious question? It was an unusual greeting, but since this friend isn’t writing long or intriguing emails, I didn’t think much of it and simply replied with an update on how I’ve been lately.
"I was really worried because I heard something strange. I’m glad to hear everything is okay."
The reply was startling, but I didn’t ask for details or who had said these strange things.
There have been several times in my life when I was shocked to hear completely unfounded rumors about my family. Once, in the middle of the night, I was woken by a knock on the door. When I answered, I found a friend and her husband standing there, looking at me with concern.
“We heard that your husband beat you up so badly you’re a mess, so we rushed over. Are you okay?”
I was not lying beaten and bruised by my husband; I was simply asleep, lost in a dream. I ended up setting out drinks and sitting with them all night, sipping awkwardly.
For a year, my husband had been away in Seoul teaching.
“I heard your husband divorced you and left for Seoul. Are you okay?”
“Divorced?”
“I heard you two, who were once such a happy couple, got divorced, so I called just in case. Did you really divorce?”
Do people wish I’d been beaten by my husband, left on the brink of death, and then divorced?
One of the most shocking rumors I heard, which even made me doubt myself, came from a friend in Seoul who called and asked:
“Was your mother’s death a suicide by any chance?”
I was so taken aback that I was at a loss for words. There was absolutely no basis for such a rumor.
Since my own rumors were far from the truth, I learned not to believe gossip about others—though this lesson came the hard way. At a respectable gathering, I asked an acquaintance,
“How is your wife? Didn’t she come with you?”
He turned red with anger and shouted,
“Why are you asking me about her?”
His voice exploded, like a boil bursting after years of restraint, startling everyone around us.
The next day, he called to apologize.
“I’m sorry. The truth is, we divorced a long time ago, but I never mentioned it.”
I had to listen to his long, previously untold story. Since then, I’ve never asked about a spouse’s wellbeing when I see someone alone at a gathering; who knows if they’ve divorced since I last saw them?
Another acquaintance separated from his wife and started dating someone I’d met a few times. I heard that due to some unspoken circumstances, he divorced and is now happily living with someone new. Unless he brought it up himself, I didn’t ask about it. Given that people with boring and difficult lives might find some small joy in the baseless rumors about me, I no longer get worked up or try to track down the source of the gossip.
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