As we have repeatedly heard, there is a great deal of “fake facts” floating around – mostly on the Internet. I know that so there is even less excuse for not following my mantra of “doing my own research”. In the last month I had received several emails about how Mr. Rogers had been in the military and had tattoos on his arm. A few people disputed that. I checked and they were correct, so now I have to apologize. Mr. Rogers was not in the military. In addition, he did not wear sweaters because he had tattoos. Knowing him he probably didn’t even have a blemish on his arm let alone tattoos. My sincere apology Mr. Rogers!
Now, it should be understood that fake facts have been around for a considerable period of time – just from different sources. I recall as a young lad, we were constantly admonished that “you should never put bananas in the refrigerator. NO! NO! NO!” Well, I suppose that was all well and good, if you like warm bananas. Personally, I like mine cold. I looked around and saw that you could buy chocolate covered bananas that you kept in the freezer. The last that I looked the freezer was part of the refrigerator. What happens when someone bakes a banana cream pie? It goes in the refrigerator since people like cold banana cream pie better than hot banana cream pie. (At least most people do.)
Now, if you do due diligence, you will most likely find that the advice (fake fact) is still to keep the bananas out of the refrigerator – some crazy theory about not ripening correctly. The Blonde in the house is apparently of this mind, so I have to sneak one in the refrigerator every once in a while. However, if you do real due diligence on the subject, you will find that if you put the bananas in a plastic bag, seal and put in the crisper, you will have the best of both worlds. That is, a nice banana, but a cold one.
How about if a young husband had written to “Dear Abby” and asked if it would be OK, if he bought his wife a leaf blower for Mother’s Day. She most likely would have replied, “Not if you want to be an old husband”. That would probably have been followed by a few thousand letters saying Abby should have added some choice epithets to her answer. Just another example of fake facts, since I sit here as an old husband who gave The Blonde a leaf blower for Mother’s Day one year. True, there were some mitigating circumstances. The Blonde likes a clean garage, and as I was working many hours back then, I did not meet her requirements in that area. So she proclaimed that all she wanted for Mother’s was a leaf blower to blow out the garage. The kids and I discussed it (they wanted to use it too), and so one bright Mother’s Day morning she had her leaf blower! Hooray!
Then, there was the very young wife who because of “fake facts” floating around thought that every young husband should have an electric razor. I attempted to explain that they did not work on me. Nevertheless, one birthday, I received a nice electric razor. Back then, I had a tough beard. I did try the razor and by 1:30 in the afternoon, my 5 o’clock shadow had arrived. Alas, it was back to the blades!
It is just terrible the havoc that “fake facts” can cause!
Barry Evans writes about Life in The Villages for Villages-News.com