Jill writes: My husband tells me fake “facts” to see how gullible I am. He once told me that croutons were made by “Thomas Crut,” a French monk who wanted to improve salads in his monastery by adding stale bread. Now I constantly question if what he tells me is true. He complains that I don’t trust him. Who’s in the right?
Your husband should remember the tale of the boy who cried wolf, which is about a boy who kept yelling about how the famous American author Thomas Wolfe was back in town. But the boy was just lying for his own amusement. Then one day Thomas Wolfe actually came back and ate the boy, because the boy was an annoying husband. (Thomas Wolfe was a cannibal.) I don’t know what the moral of that story is. But anyway, your husband is wrong. And I also want to apologize for testing the magazine’s fact checkers with that dumb joke. Thank you for (otherwise) always keeping me honest.
John Hodgman is the host of the Judge John Hodgman podcast.