Standing next to an Intelligent Young Man about half my height and many years my junior,  I was commenting on an animated display of dinosaurs.

“Those are velociraptors? I though they were bigger than that.”

Young Man : “That’s the right size. They were only 3 feet long”

“In the movie they looked 8 feet tall. Weren’t they big?”

Young Man: (sigh) “No, the movie was wrong. These are wrong, too. They should have feathers.”

The rest of the afternoon followed the same pattern. I make a comment, followed by a gentle correction. When we left, we were carrying a bag of books, mostly so I could learn about what I thought I already knew. (And yes, current research shows that velociraptors had feathers.)

My error, I guess. I learn something, figure “that’s settled” and move on-never realizing that as new information becomes available, my ‘facts’ were not much more than someone’s opinion.

Wow. How am I so far behind?  How am I supposed to keep up? (Followed by another sigh, the advice “Watch videos on Youtube”, and I think a rolling of the eyes)

Makes sense-if you want to learn a new way of doing something, what better way than watch someone show you?

Left in the dust, I am. I still want to see an anchor-something printed, something tagged true, or marked false. Electrons and Bytes can be changed on a whim, voices on video can mean whatever you want them to mean.

How else can you mark progress, except by comparing now with what happened before? How can you tell an error, except by comparing it to the truth?

Standing for the Good and True,

Billy Acre