Remember when you were a child and your mother said to you, "don't make those silly faces or you face will stay that way", or some such thing? What was really going on here? You were getting your first dose of incorrect information. Sorry mom. As we live our lives we are constantly being bombarded with information that is wrong, no matter how well intentioned it might be. Another good one was when you were about 4 or 5 and got caught picking your nose. Mom would say, "if you continue to do that your nose will be so big it will spread all over your face." Oh my goodness, more misinformation, at least I think so as I don't pick my nose. We finally got to the point where we made it into school. I remember thinking how grown up those guys in the 8th grade looked. In my time, children went to grammar school for 8 years from grade 1 through 8, then they went to high school for 4 years. I got to school and the teacher told the class that if we were bad, we would be punished. My little class mates told me that the school had a spanking machine and bad kids were put into it. I didn't like that idea at all, no sir. Little did I know at the time that people made up stories and this particular story just wasn't true. I stayed on my best behavior all through the first grade. I wasn't going to give them any excuse to put me in that machine.

I remember being pushed around in school. I must have been in the fourth or fifth grade and the class bully decided that he was going to give me a beating. I decided that I would rather take that beating than back down, so I pushed him back and he told me that he was going to kill me after school and to meet him outside. I would see him several more times that day and he kept saying that he was going to kill me. Kids in the class came up to me and told me that before he got to this school he had killed a kid in a fight. Every time I saw him he would push me and I would push back. Finally it was 3:00 pm and school ended. I swallowed hard and went to the spot where the fight was supposed to take place. Guess what, he saw me from inside the building. I was surrounded by a crowd of kids and he ran away. No he hadn't killed anyone in another school and he wasn't even very tough. That is when I really learned that you have to take everything you hear with the proverbial grain of salt. Then when you get to the teen years you really hear a bunch of baloney. Some of it relates to fights, some to sex and some to people's reputations. There is nothing that can kill a teenager's reputation faster than some other teenager saying stuff about him or her that isn't true.

As we get older we experience a lot more misinformation. I remember when I enlisted in the US Army. Right off the bat I was given misinformation. I enlisted for electronics school, which I was guaranteed but never got. So much for promises. At the time I went in, I think the US Army policy was promise them anything, but give them what you want. In the dead of winter we were sent outside for physical training stripped to the waste and we were told, "don't worry the cold can't hurt you, you are soldiers now." That's kind of funny in a way, because I caught pneumonia and landed in the hospital for two weeks. Another experience I had where I was given bad info in the army was with a new type of weapon that was issued. We were all issued M16 rifles at the time and it was freezing cold and the stocks were made of fiberglass. Our Lieutenant stated that he wanted to hear us really slap the side of the stock when we came to attention and he said, "don't worry there is no way you could break that stock and if you do I will personally pay for it." Yep you guessed it, I came to attention slapping the stock hard and it shattered. The Lieutenant saw this and dismissed us and quickly left, leaving me with this broken weapon. I went to the quartermaster to turn it in and caught all kinds of hell before they finally replaced it. At first they wanted me to pay for it.

College was just as bad. I went to college on the GI Bill and would go at night after work. It turned out that there were several classes given by what are known as adjunct professors, this is a fancy word for an outsider, which in this case were bosses from my job. There were two of them employed to give legal classes. They had the credentials, that wasn't the problem. One of them was very fair, but the other stated at the beginning of class that if you work hard you will get a good mark. What he should have said was that if you worked for him on the job, he would give you a great mark at the expense of others. He couldn't give an A to more that a few people, because he felt it would make him look bad, so he took care of his cronies and lowered the marks of many people in the rest of the class. Wow the bad information just keeps coming, say one thing and do another, he should have run for a government post.

Did you ever get, "I don't know who told you that and even if they did, they didn't have the authority to say that"? That has to be one of the most aggravating statements that anyone could ever say to you. This is usually used in conjunction with paying money to someone or some company. I remember checking my hospitalization plan to see if I was covered for a certain thing. I was told I was absolutely covered. Next I checked with the doctor's office to make sure that they took my plan and was told absolutely yes. After the procedure I was sent a bill and told to pay up immediately. When I called to try and straighten it out, guess what I was told? Yup, you guessed it. The doctor wanted his money immediately and I was told that, if and when he received a check from my insurance he would return it to me. Yeah Sure. Well to tell you the truth, I just was not going to pay. It was an easy decision, because the bill was thousands of dollars and I just didn't have it at the time. I enclosed a form from my insurance carrier and mailed it to him. His office got back to me, threatened me screaming and hollering, but I told them that I didn't have it and if they went to collection they would get even less after the commission and that I was just waiting for the check to be sent to them from the carrier. They finally gave up and took the check when it came and I never went back to that doctor again.

Today I see incorrect information everywhere. We are told that certain medicines will help us, then we find out that they are actually harmful. Some of us find this out after having taken the medicine for years. We are told that we have the best and cleanest food supply in the world, yet constant scandals about food inspection and tainted food being released into our food supply are taking place with alarming regularity. We are being told that alternate energy is just around the corner and soon we won't have to worry about the price of oil. Well we have been told that for the last 30 years and here we sit and things are worse than ever. The news puts out stories, like the one from the other day about a Russian bomber approaching a US carrier off the coast of Korea. No one mentions the fact that Russia borders that country and the Russians were probably just checking on something that was near their border. We were told that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and we attacked Iraq and that was all a bunch of baloney that the government knew wasn't true, because we were the main weapons suppliers to Iraq. We were told that Vietnam attacked our ships in the Gulf of Tonkin and we went to war there and that wasn't true. If you go back far enough, we were told that the Maine, a battleship, was blown up by the Spanish and we went to war with them and we knew they didn't do it. We were even told that Lincoln and the North went to war against the South to free the slaves and that wasn't true.

I am sorry if I have become a cynic, but all these different events have driven me to it. Before taking something as gospel, we have to look into it., even if it comes from the government and maybe especially if it comes from them. It seems that many governments have their own agendas. The same goes for institutions and organizations. The people in them tend to want more power and more money. Sometimes they will tell you something that just isn't true to push their programs. The same with some people. There are those that like to feel important and those that just like to spread dirt. No, I can not just take things at face value anymore.