People

Mark has a joke he likes to tell: A vegan, a bitcoin trader and someone who didn't vote in 2016 all walk into a bar.  Who tells you about it first?

What can you do with people who know everything and can't contain themselves? (Answer:  smile and nod.  Just smile and nod.)

Recently a self-appointed food expert unexpectedly lectured me.  She railed against cornstarch and told me it was basically poison and as bad for you as fluoride.  "Look it up," she said authoritatively.  She told me pudding from a box is of the devil. (I wish I was making this up.)

Another category of people are the conspiracy theorists.  They're the ones who think we need to "wake up" to what is happening.  A different woman warned this week of how dangerous social media is.  We have all this information out there and who knows what's going to become of us?!?

There is an up side though.  For one thing, since there are a million pictures of all of us on the internet, we will avoid the fate of Margaret Mariah Beckstead.  She is my 4th great grandmother and there is one solitary picture of her in the world.

Just one.  And this is it.

See?  Now don't you feel better about your pictures?  I call all those pictures of us out there covering our bases.  Hopefully our 4th great grandchildren will happen upon a good one of us.

(Also, I think if Margaret had had a little fluoride, she may have had some teeth.)