The Walk That Gave It a Name

The Gossip Effect™ had been in my head for a while, but I didn’t have a name for it yet. Then one day I was out walking London, and she was doing what she always does, stopping at every tree to investigate the neighborhood news. Dogs don’t scroll social media. They sniff it. Apparently every tree has breaking news.

Somewhere around tree number twelve, my mom called. I asked where she was headed, and she told me she was meeting the girls downstairs for their coffee klatsch. I knew exactly what that meant. Coffee klatsch was just the nice way of saying gossip, so of course I had to tease her about it.

“No,” she told me. “We don’t gossip. We share stories, catch up on the day’s events, and laugh over coffee.”

That stayed with me for the rest of the walk.

We don’t gossip. We share stories.

And I thought, well, hell. Maybe that’s it.

By the time I got home, I was fired up and told my husband I was going to create something called The Gossip Effect™. He’s used to me coming home with ideas, but this one definitely got a “Please explain.”

Fair enough.

So I did, and somewhere in the middle of explaining it to him, I realized I finally knew exactly what I was creating.

And now it had a name.

The Gossip Effect™