Don't air your dirty linen in public

When I was growing up I remember hearing two phrases quite often from my mother and some of her friends. The first was, "Don't air your dirty linen in public." Of course that referred to the age where almost all homes had a clothesline in the backyard and the housewife was very careful to have the wash look nice, to hide the personal items in between the lines with the sheets or some other large materials so that the neighbors wouldn't know what your unmentionables looked like. Remember the little poem that some boys used to write in autograph books? "Roses are red. Carolyn's (or whoever's book he was writing in) are blue. I know because I saw them on the clothesline."

But the phrase about the dirty linen covers more than modesty. It reflects on the skill of the housewife to have a nice white or brightly colored laundry. If you had a child that was a bed wetter, you would never lay the sheet out on the roof, or over the line to dry while waiting for Monday to wash the sheet. No. You did not air it in public.

That is specifically what the phrase means, but it took on a much larger meaning. We kept our family secrets (dirty linen) private. We didn't share concerns with neighbors, but put on a happy face for the world to see in spite of what was really going on in our families.

The other phrase that my mother would use often was, "What will the neighbors think?" Often I would be denied permission to do something, not because Mama thought it was a bad thing to do, but because one or more of our neighbors would frown upon it. And usually the neighbor would find out about it, or by asking around would figure out what I was up to. Party telephone lines assisted those who were prying. But often it would just be seeing the car go over the railroad tracks at an unusual hour or seeing a strange car coming and going on the road. To avoid the eyes of one neighbor we, or our brothers, might choose a different route to town. That would alert different sets of eyes who are wondering why on earth they are driving in this direction.

I even used the phrase often after Lester became a minister when one of our children wanted to do something "sinful" like mow the lawn on Sunday, or heavens forbid!, skip going to church one Sunday. I didn't think it was a bad thing to do, but I knew that some of the neighbors, particularly members of the church Lester was serving, would criticize us for allowing it or having so little control over our kids. I always thought of my mother when I said it. I wonder if any of them have used it on their own children.

I doubt very much that this is a concern anymore. I recently signed on to Facebook so that I could play Scrabble with my friends. But, of course, I read most of the messages that are posted. Sometimes I can't believe what I read.

Some will post the most personal things. If one "friend" is mad at someone there doesn't seem to be any hesitation about pouring it all out on Facebook. Actually you can't really know how far that message will go because I read what my daughters' friends are saying to her even if they have not chosen me as a Facebook friend. It isn't long until I know a little about those friends, which is nice, but if they had shared a personal problem I doubt if they would want a stranger to have read it. There is a lot of dirty linen made public on Facebook and since none of that is ever really deleted for good, how would some of those young people feel if in their older years some of those statements or pictures would be made public?

Even some of the romantic statements might be embarrassing several years later when they are shared with a different partner, or new in-laws.

So, it's not what will the neighbors think anymore. It's how wide is the neighborhood in which your thoughts are shared?

I've decided I won't share my personal thoughts on Facebook. I don't need to. I can just bore my readers with them every week!