Saturday, April 27, 2013

Lesson 14- Keep a secret

When was the last time someone asked you to keep a secret?

I admit I don't get this request often. But having a grandchild keeps the skill alive. Don't worry, I'm not that grandparent. I don't keep secrets from my daughter. And I don't keep a secret that would harm either of them. But in my short experience as a grandmother, I've learned one of my biggest assets is being a confidante. In fact...

the biggest reason to keep a secret is to gain someone's trust.

some of  Valerie Fields' early work
I learned this from Valerie Fields who is (after all) my granddaughter. When she was five, she suddenly got embarrassed when we talked about her. And we talked about her a lot. She was always doing funny things. In a circle of adults, she was really all we had to talk about. But it bothered her. And she told us that, so we stopped.

I kept writing the things she said that made me laugh. Because that's what I do. And because I really needed a laugh. One day I decided to put them into a blog, so everyone could laugh. When I told Valerie Fields my idea, she was excited.
"Great idea, Nana," were her exact words. But when I told her everyone would also know the stories were about her, she changed her tune.
"I'm sorry," she said, "I don't think that's going to work for me at all."

She would be embarrassed. I knew that. Before I ditched the idea, I posed another. "You could use a different name, " I suggested. "Maybe your pen name, Valerie Fields."

She was only four when she gave herself that name.

It was at the beginning of her book making phase. She told us book makers had 'fancier' names. So she changed hers, for the sake of her career.
"Hmmm," was her response to my idea for another name change.
"I think I need a not-so-boring name for stories. Like Pinkie Gladys Gutzman," she suggested. (Yes, that one.)
And so it began. The first week or two she gave me the name she wished to be called. Then she lost interest entirely . And went on to the business of being six- like making books and drawing pictures.

later  work on same subject
Now I invent names for her myself. Like Oreo or Sweet Pea or whatever I am thinking of when I think of her. You see it doesn't really matter what she is called, as long as I am not telling the part she asked me to keep secret.
And that is the story of how six year old book maker Valerie Fields (who, I'm proud to say, is also my granddaughter) came to write her own privacy statement.  

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