Loshon Hora: Can't Live With It, Can't Live Without It

Loshon Hora has always been there for me, both as a faithful and unfaithful friend. Loshon Hora has in many ways destroyed lives, including my own several times over, but I always make a nice recovery.


Loshon Hora usually creeps in when I least expect it and embroils people, entraps friends, creates enemies, alienates co-workers, entire families and their respective relatives; turns their worlds upside down, thereby creating utter chaos.

I met Loshon Hora several years ago when I was enrolled in elementary school during an encounter I had with a girl at my school. She accused me of calling her a name that I never knew I had said, but I knew she was lying through her teeth because she liked me and plus the fact she did it all of the time as a sort of badge of honor, showing her other friends that she was more important to me than them.

I didn’t run into Loshon Hora again until I was 12, when a vicious and cruel boy said he had heard that I didn’t use soap to wash up and accused me of causing a stink. So to satisfy himself, he beat me up for no apparent reason. Then other boys followed his lead and beat me up for no apparent reason. Still other boys came to my defense and soon there were whole gangs of boys fighting over me just because I never chose to fight back nor ever said a word. Who started it all, you ask? It was my good friend, Loshon Hora.

Loshon Hora followed me into high school and due to Loshon Hora, I was usually picked last for sports teams in gym class at least until my junior year, shunned like an ugly duckling by almost 99 percent of the girls in my high school when it came to asking them out to for either a date or the prom. Is it any wonder why I hated high school so much and just wished to get the hell out of there?

During my long and industrious college career, I was on the 10-year plan, I saw Loshon Hora from time to time, but I did a fairly decent job of avoiding Loshon Hora and was able to grow on my own without anyone stunting or hurting me too much. If anyone caused me any trouble, it was me and me alone for lack of a better action of me just picking out the wrong crowd of friends, wrong career choices, wrong classes, wrong clothes to wear, wrong music to listen to and the wrong girls to date.

I didn’t catch up with Loshon Hora again until I began my career as a writer/journalist in the 1990s and oh, man! Let me tell you something, I saw Loshon Hora everywhere I went, but in some circles, Loshon Hora was well known and accepted as friend verses foe. The mere fact that I saw Loshon Hora more and more every week, told me that in some ways this was catch-up time for Loshon Hora, having missed me for so many years.

But in a way, I was glad to see Loshon Hora again after missing Loshon Hora for all those years in between. Loshon Hora enhanced my writing; gave me tips and bits of information I could have not had or found otherwise and for that I was extremely grateful. With Loshon Hora around, I was able to spit and shine up my short stories, poems, prose and other yarns.

Whenever I wrote reviews or feature stories for newspapers, magazines or publications, Loshon Hora was there encouraging me to spice them up a bit, make them funny, biting, but readable with a hook, line and sinker approach. I listened. I learned. I laughed. Most importantly, I loved my own work for taking this approach. I mean, writing is writing and all, but what’s the use in writing if you can’t have a good friend like Loshon Hora at your side as a muse?

Later, when I began to compose songs, Loshon Hora was right at my side encouraging me to give my work the full throttle treatment, to which I did. My work was full of vim, vigor and zest. I had to thank Loshon Hora fully for that. Even as I blog, Loshon Hora has been right here by my side, always pushing, always encouraging me.

But it was in the workplace most recently that Loshon Hora almost made me screw up. Loshon Hora told me that someone was not up to their usual par and encouraged me to give a hearty heads-up to others. And so I did. But little did I know or realize that Loshon Hora was playing a trick on me; yes, Loshon Hora did so to spite me for payback for all those avoided years.

And then I fell down; fell down hard. But Loshon Hora was there to pick me right back up. And I learned my lesson that day; learned it the hard way. And I also learned that day that Loshon Hora isn’t always correct. Nope, Loshon Hora can be downright mean and nasty and just plain evil.

And the moral of the story should be that Loshon Hora isn’t always right or wrong; I just never know with my friend Loshon Hora; sometimes Loshon Hora can be my best friend always looking out for me or encouraging me and quite possibly my own worst enemy, causing untold amounts of chaos just to spite me. Life is like that sometimes. And so is Loshon Hora.