My Little Secret

I received a disturbing text message from my friend’s wife Carla. She is super sweet and not one to play jokes.

Her text message said, “I’m really worried about Rob. Last night I found a stack of obesity porn DVD’s hidden in his closet. I seriously think he has a problem. What should I do? Please help!”

My heart dropped.

To even ponder the idea of Rob watching these made me feel sad and sick.

Just the thought of this counts as an all-time low on par with my face accidentally touching the carpet at a Bikram studio on 2/12/98, bad tripping at a Dead show on 12/27/91, and asking Vanessa Nussbaum to go steady at Jonny Rosser’s 6th grade birthday party and her responding, “um, well, ah, um…”

I picked up the phone and called Carla.

Ring, ring.

I said, “Hi it’s David. I got your email.”

“Hi.”

I continued, “Porn addiction, is there rehab for that?”

“What? Is this David Romanelli?!” Carla screamed into the phone.

Carla was hanging out with 18 girlfriends who were over for their Book Club night.

I heard one of them in the background say with a thick accent, “Oh I took David Romanelli’s class in Rahchesta a few yee-ahs ago.”

“Is that the fat guy?” another lady chimed in.

“He’s not fat, what are you saying Judy!” a third lady shouted back.

Clearly the “Book Club” was a front. The ladies weren’t reading, they were drinking.

Anyhoo…I hoped and prayed Carla didn’t hear what I said. But my hopes were dashed when she said, “David Romanelli what the hell are you saying about porn addiction? What’s the matta with you?! Are you serious?”

The 18 ladies in the background went beserk, chattering, laughing, screaming. PORN ADDICTION?!

Turns out Carla’s husband Rob, who’s a jokester, text-jacked Carla’s cell. In other words, he grabbed her phone, and wrote a text that appeared to be from her.

This is a serious problem and not funny in the slightest. Along with text-jacking are the following issues:

–Cross-Texting: I was in Vegas and wrote a text to my fiancée “Love you excited to see you later” and instead sent it to my buddy Matt Stringfellow. That’s not the text message he wants to be receiving from me at 3am on a Saturday night.

–Dirty Old Man in the Phone: You might have read about my posse/pussy disaster. It happened again the other day. After a morning argument with my fiancée, I tried to sneak back in her good favor and intended to write a text message saying “Hi.” But my phone write “Ho.” That’s not the text message she wants to be receiving on a stressful day at work.

Byting the Apple

I’m giving in and getting an Ipad soon. But I want to reiterate technology is increasingly convenient and increasingly dangerous.

What we post on the internet or send via text is permanent and can never be deleted from the countless inboxes, Facebook pages, and random websites that repost anything and everything.

And as the world becomes more connected, the tendency is to share everything with everyone.

So here’s the question: Can you keep a secret?

My Two Secrets

I’m a Mega-Gemini. I talk a lot and only have 2 secrets that I’ve never told anyone. Actually, I told one of the secrets to one person. Does that count? So I only have one secret. That’s it.

Kahil Gibran once wrote, “If you reveal your secrets to the wind, you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.”

Such is the beauty of an inner life, of faith, of prayer or meditation. They offer Another Place to share your secrets.

Without this place, you feel as if there’s no storage, nowhere to keep anything. You might live in a 12 acre mansion, but the lack of an inner life makes it feel as if you live in a 100 square foot attic.

I have a challenge for you.

Disentangle yourself from the sprawling web of information and Create Space. Not in the yard or the kid’s rooms or the storage shed.

Rather, Create Space in your mind, in your heart, on the inside.

As goes the quote I love so much from Mary Webb, “The well of Providence is deep. It’s the buckets we bring that are small.”