Nunya Bidness

When I was about 18 I lived with my cousin and my retarded homicidal nihilist uncle. Here is a description of my cousin: just like me--a mouthy, opinionated laughter junkie--except smaller and darker. Here is a description of my uncle: just like me--tall, fat and light-skinded, smart but not smarter than Really Smart People, selfish--except batshit crazy.

Uncle Ricky mostly ignored us in favor of reading Barely Legal magazine and searching the internet for tips on how to blow shit up without leaving any evidence. But every once in a while he would drop some knowledge on us and I can say with all sincerity that on occasion, his widsom really did serve to edify our soft, malleable little teenage characters:

1. He taught me the word 'pragmatic' while referring to himself, leading to my erroneous use of the word as a description for any delusional lunatic who believed that he was smarter than everyone else for about six years afterward.

2. He believes that the government knows that aliens are real and claims that they keep this knowledge to themselves because every Christian on the planet would shoot himself tomorrow if he became privy to the fact that God did not create the earth alone for His children, and did not form them all in His image.

3. Sometimes you would ask him a question, and he would answer, "Nunya." You'd go, "Nunya? Nunya what?" and once fallen into his trap, he would smugly reply, "Nunya Bidness."

As an inquisitive (read: nosy) teenager I felt personally assaulted any time someone would answer one of my many many personal and invasive questions with some pithy remark about how that information was classified. What do you have to hide? I would wonder. My life is an open book, I have nothing to be ashamed of. Go on. Ask me anything. ....Please?

Everyone in the world doesn't have to know about every single facet of your life. Which is why I find it so irritating when someone whines about being "left out".

Recently, while drunk, I blabbered on to a girlfriend about an event which took place not long ago among other friends, of which I was not proud. Later on she confronted me, telling me that she "prefers honesty" and was hurt that the other friends knew about the shameful event while she was left in the dark.

Another friend of mine went away last weekend to visit a man she's dating. She's 22 and he's 34 (but looks 40). She has a history of dating older men--usually in the late 40s to early 50s range--and while none of us are big fans of it, she's a big girl and can do whatever the hell she wants. A mutual friend of ours was chuffed that she needed to keep it a secret, claiming that she thought we were better friends than that and that good friends don't hide things from one another.

In both scenarios, the person with the "secret" is, in actuality, just keeping to themselves a bit of information that is neither relevant nor beneficial to the friendship. So I partied a little hard the other night. Big deal. So my friend sits on saggy grey penis. Who cares?

Is it really necessary to know everything about our friends' lives? The older I get, the less I think so. I used to get all bent out of shape when it became apparent that everyone knew about some event or other before I did, but now it's like, obviously if I had been invited to that (metaphorical) party I would have known about it. If I hadn't, then I must not have needed to know about it.

*leans out window* *checks to see if sky has fallen* *nope still there*

Only grammas and other assorted old/lonely/boring people need to regularly issue reports on every single bowel movement they had, every meal eaten by their cat, every pill popped, every anal thermometer reading, every double-coupon sale at the grocery store. Some stuff, no one else really needs to know, if for no other reason than that my life is not nearly as interesting to others as it is to me. Trust me... some stuff is nunya bidness for a good reason.