Hold tongue for a bit in this tight-knit burg

The Spokane Moment: We’ve all had one, perhaps without even knowing its significance.

Seven years ago, as a recently transplanted Seattleite, I clued in to the Spokane Moment much too slowly. For me, this phenomenon occurred for the first time while innocently chatting with acquaintances. There may have been wine involved. As I was innocently (albeit naively) dishing some smack-talk about a rude woman I had met, one of the women I was talking with went silent and gave me The Look. You know, the wide-eyed look that says: “Oh no, you didn’t just say that.”

Then she said, “That’s my sister-in-law and she is very stressed right now in her efforts to cure cancer and bring about world peace.” (Slight exaggeration on my part, but you get my drift.) All the other women in the group went silent and looked at the loser newcomer (me) with sympathy tinged with horror.

Oops. Spokane Moment. And not a good one. And not my last.

The cold, hard fact about Spokane is that everyone knows everyone else. It’s a little village. No. It is a little tribe in a little village. Nothing like Seattle where nobody knows anyone else unless you are from Capitol Hill. Then you know everybody else who is from Capitol Hill.

But here?

You simply cannot run your fool mouth on about people here. It’s probably for the best, granted, that you don’t run your mouth anyway, just on principle. But in general information-gathering discussions, you have to pretend like you are best friends forever with everyone because you never know what filial or social connection your fellow man or woman may have.

This makes some social events fraught with tension. It’s taken awhile to decipher the spider-weblike connections that are evident in different groups of people here. The connections are seemingly endless. School, parishes, families, extended families, friends, ex-friends, ex-families … you get the picture. It seems that every group I have been introduced to has some common denominator of another group. It is truly mind-boggling.

There are Spokane Moments that I have yet to be forgiven for, moments where I lacked the necessary discretion needed for this small town. I have found, however, that nearly everyone has had at least one Spokane Moment. They are not all necessarily negative, either. What is better than finding out that a friend is the sister of another friend’s childhood nanny who married into a third friend’s family but it didn’t work out so now they are with the first friend’s ex-husband? Good times.

I make it a point to take recent transplants under my wing while they are freshmen and let them know that it is best to be a silent, watchful member of conversations about others for a while. Like, for seven years or so.