The author of this article is a resident of Buffalo since birth and descendant of the owners of the famed: Harper’s Café, a landmark in Buffalo Oklahoma for decades. Greg Harper, is hearing impaired and has been since his youth.
We all remember the children's game called "telephone", "grapevine" or "gossip". This is the game where kids sit around in a circle or line and a short sentence is handed to the first child and they whisper the sentence to the next one down the line. This is then repeated to the next child one by one. At the end, the last child states what they heard out loud.
Next, the first kid reads the original sentence. All the kids laugh because it doesn't match anything that was originally said or heard. What started out as "Bob's pizza tastes great" might end up being "Sally's a sneaky snake". By the time the message had reached the last person it was never in its original form and sometimes could be misconstrued.
As a young child I tried to play that game with the kids in my class but every time the message got to me I couldn't make out the whispers. No matter how hard I tried all I could hear was wind blowing in my ear. The teacher would pull me out of the circle and I would sit back and watch the other kids play the game. But still, every time it was played, the message never made it around the same way it started. Since I couldn't play the game I never understood why it was always so much fun. I learned from this experience that it wasn't a good game for me to play. If I did play it, all I ever got out of it was a bunch of hot air blown in my ear.
The teachers had to figure out a way to get me back into the game. Simple enough, they made me the first one in the circle or line every time. I got to deliver the first version of the message. So all the times we played the game I got to whisper the first original message to the next person. Since I was first, I always knew what the original message was and I knew I was telling it right the first time. Furthermore, I learned in order to know the original message you needed to be first. I also figured out that when I got to read the original message out loud - that was the fist time everyone finally knew what the true message was.
What can be made of this? The more times the story or message is told the less it may hold true to its original form. If 1 person tells 2 people about a topic and then those two people go and discuss the topic with 2 people the number of people that know the topic doubles. So 2 become 4, 4 become 8, 8 become 16, 16 to 32.. and so on. Based on that, the message will be have to be told over and over 7 different times to be able to reach more than 200 people. The story gets changed a little bit seven times. As I learned as a child, and even as an adult today, the last version may not be the same as the original.
By delivering a message to the most people at once the less likely it will have to be repeated.
So how does the message get out to the most people?
We can't call a mandatory assembly at the high school auditorium and make everyone sit down and listen. One person can't call every person out there and read the message out loud one by one. I guess you could buy stamps and mail the message to everyone but that might be cost prohibitive.
How about the Internet? The World Wide Web! Put the message on a blog or website and let everyone see it there. Everyone reads the same thing and gets the original version. The number of persons who can read it is only limited by access to a computer. By putting a message out electronically it is read by more people in its original form. It reaches 200 or more people at the very beginning and reduces the number of times it is repeated. This gives a story more of a chance to hold true to what was originally said. That is how I have chosen to play the "telephone" game.
Log on to Onsidebuffalo.blogspot.com Click Here
or www.InsideBuffalo.net (this website) and you too can get the message before it goes down the grapevine.
Greg Harper
The Gossip Game
We all remember the children's game called "telephone", "grapevine" or "gossip". This is the game where kids sit around in a circle or line and a short sentence is handed to the first child and they whisper the sentence to the next one down the line. This is then repeated to the next child one by one. At the end, the last child states what they heard out loud.
Next, the first kid reads the original sentence. All the kids laugh because it doesn't match anything that was originally said or heard. What started out as "Bob's pizza tastes great" might end up being "Sally's a sneaky snake". By the time the message had reached the last person it was never in its original form and sometimes could be misconstrued.
As a young child I tried to play that game with the kids in my class but every time the message got to me I couldn't make out the whispers. No matter how hard I tried all I could hear was wind blowing in my ear. The teacher would pull me out of the circle and I would sit back and watch the other kids play the game. But still, every time it was played, the message never made it around the same way it started. Since I couldn't play the game I never understood why it was always so much fun. I learned from this experience that it wasn't a good game for me to play. If I did play it, all I ever got out of it was a bunch of hot air blown in my ear.
The teachers had to figure out a way to get me back into the game. Simple enough, they made me the first one in the circle or line every time. I got to deliver the first version of the message. So all the times we played the game I got to whisper the first original message to the next person. Since I was first, I always knew what the original message was and I knew I was telling it right the first time. Furthermore, I learned in order to know the original message you needed to be first. I also figured out that when I got to read the original message out loud - that was the fist time everyone finally knew what the true message was.
What can be made of this? The more times the story or message is told the less it may hold true to its original form. If 1 person tells 2 people about a topic and then those two people go and discuss the topic with 2 people the number of people that know the topic doubles. So 2 become 4, 4 become 8, 8 become 16, 16 to 32.. and so on. Based on that, the message will be have to be told over and over 7 different times to be able to reach more than 200 people. The story gets changed a little bit seven times. As I learned as a child, and even as an adult today, the last version may not be the same as the original.
By delivering a message to the most people at once the less likely it will have to be repeated.
So how does the message get out to the most people?
We can't call a mandatory assembly at the high school auditorium and make everyone sit down and listen. One person can't call every person out there and read the message out loud one by one. I guess you could buy stamps and mail the message to everyone but that might be cost prohibitive.
How about the Internet? The World Wide Web! Put the message on a blog or website and let everyone see it there. Everyone reads the same thing and gets the original version. The number of persons who can read it is only limited by access to a computer. By putting a message out electronically it is read by more people in its original form. It reaches 200 or more people at the very beginning and reduces the number of times it is repeated. This gives a story more of a chance to hold true to what was originally said. That is how I have chosen to play the "telephone" game.
Log on to Onsidebuffalo.blogspot.com Click Here
or www.InsideBuffalo.net (this website) and you too can get the message before it goes down the grapevine.
Greg Harper
