Various sources give various authors for the quote (I've seen Edwin Armstrong, Artemus Ward, Will Rogers, or a variant by Josh Billings) that goes, "It ain’t so much the things we don’t know that get us into trouble. It’s the things we know that just ain’t so." Every now and then, I'm reminded how much I know that just isn't true. Recently, The Excellent Wife took out paper and pencil and, on the back of an envelope, did some quick calculations, and showed me that I was being unduly pessimistic about our retirement options; that, while we will not be able to live in any upscale community, we might be able to do better than my plan of an abandoned UPS truck in West Virginia. How many other things am I wrong about, that I don't even bother to check because I don't know I'm wrong?
The other thing that's taking over my brains today is that I can't stop ruminating on stupid mistakes, and cruel things I said, when I was in high school. That was 40 years ago, I haven't seen those people since, and there's certainly nothing I can do about it now. Does this stuff ever go away?
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