A loose tongue will get you in a tight place.
Grace Olmsted
Grace Olmsted enjoys a good conversation.
Topics range from her extended family, old stories about her parents and grandparents and her experiences growing up in Iowa during the Great Depression.
But one thing that you'll probably never hear coming out of Olmsted's mouth is a single word of gossip or slander.
"A loose tongue will get you in a tight place," Olmsted said.
It's an old adage, but one that has stuck with Olmsted, a former dietary supervisor. Olmsted said she was only about 10 years old when her mother scrawled those words of wisdom into her autograph book.
Olmsted, a 1947 graduate of the University of Iowa, said other members of her family helped reinforce that message with similar words most of us have heard at one point or another in our lives.
"My grandma said, 'If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all,'" she said.
Olmstead admits that she likes to talk a lot, something she picked up from her father, who she said was, "quite a talker." But she's always careful about what she says and especially about what she asks for.
Though she's been a widow for more than 20 years, Olmstead said she'll never ask for help from her five children. It's a lesson that she's learned from her father's experience. Once a prominent electrician on the East Coast at the turn of the 20th century, Olmsted said her father gave up his passion to help his father's struggling Iowa farm. Olmsted said she thinks her father never got over that decision.
And while she's not one to ask for much, Olmsted warned to be careful to watch what you say, no matter what situation you're in.
"It can get you into difficulty because you can lose friends and jobs if you said the wrong thing at the wrong time," she said.
— Lee Hermiston
