A good reminder…
It never hurts to ask someone else “what is this?”
I ran across an online posting indicating a former US president had written a decree in a divorce case. While I remembered the president having been an attorney, I did not remember him being a judge. Knowing that memories are sometimes ephemeral things (mine included), I recognized the fact that I could be wrong.
Instead of scanning biographies of the former president, I decided to look at the original copy of the document to which the posting referred. A quick read of it made it clear what it was: a bill of complaint in a divorce case. It was not any sort of verdict or order issued by a judge. The former president had written a “bill” for his client.
It reminded me that when I run across something I’m not 100% familiar with that seeking the opinion of someone else who is more versed in those items than I am. There’s nothing wrong with asking someone their opinion of what something means.
And there is nothing wrong with checking your memory. Sometimes we are correct. Sometimes we are not.
One response
My parents, aunt and uncle maintained the misinformation about why our grandparents left Oklahoma for Texas in 1942 at the ages of 52. In 2015, my cousins found a news clipping in a box of items that had been in my uncle’s desk at work. He died in 1968. The article changed the myth considerably. We could not see the reason to hide the truth. It didn’t change our feelings for our grandparents. Different times have different norms.