Have you ever let the cat out of the bag?

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Keeno
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05 Jun 2011, 7:10 pm

Have you ever let the cat out of the bag?

(That is, have you ever given away something that was someone else's secret?)



IdahoRose
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05 Jun 2011, 9:43 pm

Yes. I have told other people's secrets before on several occasions. One of them was when I accidentally let my mom know that my sister was buying her a stereo for Christmas.



CockneyRebel
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05 Jun 2011, 10:30 pm

Yes. I gave my dad some underwear for a Father's day present when I was 6. My dad opened up the box and said, "Let me guess...is it a pair of runners?"

I got irritated and said, "It's underwear, dad!"


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nick007
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06 Jun 2011, 9:51 am

Not intentionally. I said some stuff about people to others or made a comment to the person in front of others but I didn't know those things were secrets & that I shouldn't of said anything. I should of known but my Aspieness didn't know. I'm the silent type who listens a lot more than he talks & I don't look like I'm paying attention or care so others feel comfortable talking about secrets in front of me. I'm not into gossip


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06 Jun 2011, 9:54 am

Yes but not right out on purpose. I was asking advice about what to do about someone's drug addiction and the fact that I asked got out of hand...


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Mummy_of_Peanut
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07 Jun 2011, 4:45 am

I almost did yesterday and managed to stop my tongue mid word. A mum said, 'Remember the toddler party when the Santa came?' I said, 'Yes, I remember Ji..'. I stopped before 'Jim' came out, when I noticed her 6yr old standing beside her. It was her fault for saying 'the Santa' anyway. Who says that? It's just Santa.



ShenLong
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07 Jun 2011, 11:41 am

Literally and figureativly. The former is a long story.
I was the one that told my friend that her boyfriend was cheating on her(or rather that he was too chicken to just break up with her rather than poutright cheating). I negotiated their breakup.



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20 May 2021, 11:20 am

No because I have not put a cat in a bag in the first place.



nick007
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20 May 2021, 4:38 pm

Ferengi Rule Of Acquisition #135 is relevant here & something I really "should" of known on my own if I didn't have Aspergers. It's not exactly a canon rule though :arrow:
"Listen to secrets, but never repeat them"
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Ru ... cquisition


Mountain Goat wrote:
No because I have not put a cat in a bag in the first place.
:lol:


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naturalplastic
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21 May 2021, 1:33 am

If you try to "sell someone in a pig in a poke" you might mess it up by "letting the cat out of the bag".

A "poke" is a bag.

Back in the days of old it was a common scam to sell folks an unseen squirming animal in a bag as a "pig" which was really just a stray cat, and thus not valuable livestock. So the two expressions are like a couplet in their common origin.



funeralxempire
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21 May 2021, 2:03 am

Mountain Goat wrote:
No because I have not put a cat in a bag in the first place.



Typically someone else has put the cat in the bag in this metaphor. You're just not supposed to reveal that it's a cat inside the bag.

Refer to NP's post above this one for more details.

The one who lets the cat out of the bag doesn't set the lie up, the one who puts a cat in the bag and tries to sell it as a pig does that. The honest person in their company lets the cat out because they didn't know it was supposed to be a pig and be kept inside the bag.

Unless you get the metaphor and were just making a joke, in which case :mrgreen:


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Mountain Goat
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21 May 2021, 4:08 am

Is like saying things that I am not supposed to say?

Yes. I do that because I am too open.

Yes. I do have secrets and protect others secrets too, but often I am too open and honest which can lead manipulative people to take advantage...

Though I am clever too so I can (Though I don't but I did as a child) easily get my own back in hidden ways if I wanted to but I don't. I realize that it is wrong to and is immature so I don't.

I am too open. I can keep other peoples secrets but I do not want to retain secrets because it takes effort to retain them... But I do not often keep my own secrets... Though a few I do like certain things....

But yes. I can say things through eing too open and honest without even knowing I was not supposed to say them and it can get me into trouble as people assume that I know the difference between something said in confidence and something gossipy. I do not do gossip as it does not serve a logical purpose... But I do talk a lot. I used to be very very quiet during my young "Watching" years.
I call them my watching years because I would watch everybody to learn about them. The first couple of years in school I would just stand in the same place every play time and aatch. I would not play. I was not included but when asked I would not because I did not know their rules to know how to join in and play.
I would play at home with my brother all the time, but not in school for the first few years. I was also bullied (Not sure if bullying is the word. He wanted to play by riding me like a horse all the time as he had older brothers and I was all serious and did not want to play and found his forceful acts claustrophobic so to me it was being bullied. To him it was playing) by one kid during that time so my time was spend avoiding him during the first few months when I was 4, going on 5 years old.
Then I found a single friend but he was classed as autistic after he drank a bottle of bleach at his home around when we were around 5 1/2 to 6 years old, so I did not see him for a few months, and when he came back to school I was not allowed to play with him or be with him (He was in his own world after the bleach where he had been friendly to me before), and a week or two later he had to go to a special school so I lost my only friend.
It was when I moved up to the juniors at the age of 7 onwards where I really learned how to play with others in school as the older kids (Up to 11 years old) started playing piggy back fights and I could do this as I had cousins their age where I had been on their backs, so though I did not like to go on the tallest kids backs, I enjoyed piggy back fights (The aim was to get other kids to fall off the backs) as I was small and light so we had fun! The older kids preferred me because I was good at it. That is what gained me the confidence to play with kids of my own age as well.



Edna3362
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21 May 2021, 5:53 am

Never accidentally. I like secrets and secrecy that much to a point of obsession at some time.
Mindful enough to consistently play dumb or dance around it.

The only real way for me to accidentally reveal something is to not explicitly state it should be a secret -- or if it's something it can be revealed nonverbally (i.e. catching me)


Or on purpose;
Only then if it's anything to do with my life and if it's relevant enough for me to be affected by it.

Which is close to only twice so far.


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nick007
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21 May 2021, 2:11 pm

funeralxempire wrote:
Mountain Goat wrote:
No because I have not put a cat in a bag in the first place.



Typically someone else has put the cat in the bag in this metaphor. You're just not supposed to reveal that it's a cat inside the bag.

Refer to NP's post above this one for more details.

The one who lets the cat out of the bag doesn't set the lie up, the one who puts a cat in the bag and tries to sell it as a pig does that. The honest person in their company lets the cat out because they didn't know it was supposed to be a pig and be kept inside the bag.

Unless you get the metaphor and were just making a joke, in which case :mrgreen:
I assumed MG was making a joke since he does joke sometimes like a lot of us including me & this is a joke he would make :lol:

In some cases the honest person knows that the cat is supposed to be a pig & the honest person chooses to let the cat out because they do not want the buyer to be gypped or they want the seller to have a hard time for some reason. This happens a bit in shows with mean high-school girls. They backstab each other in their friend circle by intentionally leaking info about their friends in a way that makes it look unintentional.

Letting the cat out of the bag is not uncommon for us Aspies due to our problems understanding social rules. We also tend to be outsiders so we can be less aware of what is going on which can make us wildcards for saying info we shouldn't. We may be unaware of the info we should not say or we don't consider it relevant in the conversations we do have with people which can make us less likely to spread info. But on the flip-side we may not be fully aware of all the details/facts &/or we misjudge things so we may say something without realizing that we should not say it.

There is an expression that sometimes has a very similar meaning as "Letting the cat out of the bag" & it goes "Don't spill the beans". I have an idea of the origin of this expression but I'm not sure & it would be helpful if someone like naturalplastic could explain it here, Thanx for explaining this one BTW :D


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naturalplastic
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21 May 2021, 3:07 pm

Nowadays the expression is often used in rather innocent situations. Like you're planning a surprise party for someone, and someone with loose lips lets it out in front of the birthday person. So then "the cat is out of the bag".

So you hafta tell the birthday girl/boy to..."act surprised anyway!! !!".

Dont know the derivation of "spill the beans". Could be that beans being spilled just makes a mess. Or it could be that
it's related to chicanery, like the cat/pig thing. Like you give someone what looks like a bucket full of coins, but what the bucket really contains is a gallon of raw beans with just a thin layer of coins on the top. Just a guess. :lol:

Just now googled it. No one seems to know the origin, but it seems to have come from a game at county fairs in which you guess the number of beans in a jar.



Joe90
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21 May 2021, 3:27 pm

I don't think I ever have, not that I can remember anyway.

But I have said things in the past that didn't need to be said, like saying something that's "too much information" (not necessarily sex-related).
I don't know if that counts or not.


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