“Stop being a yenta!” my mother would exclaim when I’d try to listen in on her phone calls. There was no social media in the 90s, so my mother’s only mode of communication was to talk on the phone for hours – to her mother, a”h, her friends, our neighbors.

It’s not that I wanted to know the gossip on the other line for any nefarious reasons – I simply craved information about other peoples’ lives. It helped orient me in a big, confusing world of social norms and expectations.

My brain has always been a little bit different. I get hyper-focused on certain special interests, remember minute details of certain events, but can’t ever remember where I left my keys. As a young person, I struggled to figure out friendships as relationships became more about common interests and less about proximity. Being a “yenta” helped me study people’s lives and get a better picture of how the world works. What my mom meant by “stop being a yenta” was stop being so nosy; no one likes a gossip. As I grew up and learned how to navigate often painful and confusing social situations through the varied relationships of adolescence, I realized that my yenta tendencies had less to do with gossip and more to do with understanding the people, their problems, and the world around me.