The Bloody Tongue

Today I got a quick lesson in cause and effect. I'm not sure how it all started, but somehow my husband and I were talking about our previous life, before we became religious. We were reminiscing over old friends and somehow, we started talking about a group of friends in particular.
 
My husband had told me that a certain person had recently had a baby, and I was glad to hear about it. Then we started talking about another person that seemed completely unrelated to the subject- or so I thought. And, suddenly, for some reason, he wouldn't talk about it any more. “It's scandalous,” he said, with a mischievous smile in his eyes.
 
Scandalous?
 
My mouth started watering. I love scandals!
 
“Tell me!” I asked him, ready to hear all the juicy details.
 
“I can't,” he ever-so-innocently exclaimed. “That would be lashon hara!”
 
“No, it wouldn't!” I countered. “Don't be so righteous!”
 
“Sorry, can't.”
 
“Tell me. Tell me! TELL MEEEE!!!”
 
“Nope.”
 
I saw that verbal insistence wasn't working- so I tried a different, more Iraqi approach. “I'm going to beat you up if you don't tell me!” And the punches began…
As my knuckles started swelling from my repeated futile attempts to hurt/intimidate him, he was getting increasingly annoyed with me. Finally, he gave in. He revealed the secret that he had been holding in for almost 10 years about a certain person.
 
“That's IT?!!”  I exclaimed, totally let down by his boring revelation. Now I was the one who was annoyed, especially since my knuckles started throbbing.
 
I quickly moved on, both mentally and physically. The laundry was yelling for me to stop ignoring it and the boxes needed to be packed with unnecessary stuff that will never be used yet keeps getting moved from place to place.
 
In the middle of my 18-hour daily marathon of holding the baby while trying to do all of my household chores without moving my arms, I decided to spoil myself and sit down to eat something.
 
As I held the baby in one arm and hungrily ate my cereal, I was going over the list of what still needed to get done for our move. I guess I must have started daydreaming, because I stopped paying attention to what I was doing
.
All of a sudden, “YYYYEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!”
 
I screamed like a madwoman as I felt myself about to pass out from the pain (as I was still holding the baby.) I quickly realized that I had bit down on my tongue in such a way that my teeth literally sliced an indentation into it- probably because I was chewing like a horse.
 
I stumbled over to the counter to fumble for a napkin, still trying not to pass out (while still holding the baby!) I started whimpering to myself as I blotted the unusually large amount of blood that was oozing out of my tongue.
 
I noticed that my darling husband was not around to console me. He was probably laughing from behind the corner.  As I dabbed my tongue, my annoyance with the situation began to build and build. And then the imaginary light bulb on top of my head went off- or on. Whatever.
 
I started laughing. It was like one of those fake movie laughs that start out small, then get funnier and longer when the person realizes the humor of the situation, and other people start joining in. At that point, my husband decided to see what was going on. Thanks for your concern, honey.
 
“What happened?” he innocently asked, trying to get away with not having checked up on me when I screamed bloody murder.
 
“Hashem has a great sense of humor,” I answered. “He gave me a bloody tongue because I made you speak lashon hara!”
 
“Aahh. I always knew you were a genius,” he replied.
 
Okay, he didn't really say that.
 
Nonetheless, the moral of the story is clear. Lashon hara hurts, even if you're thousands of miles away from the person you're talking about. It hurts even if the situation happened years ago and is no longer relevant. It will always bite you back, literally. I learned it the hard way. So if you're in a situation where you are at risk for listening to slander, take my advice- run, run like the wind. Save your ears- and your tongue.
 
Hey, maybe I should start an anti-lashon hara campaign. I could call it “Save the Tongues…”