Is It True...?

I was nearly 30 years old before I realized that it isn’t a federal offense to sing at the dinner table. Somewhere in my 3rd or 4th year of life, I was crooning a little ditty during dinner (which we call ‘supper’ in the South) and my mother said, “Don’t sing at the table.” My youthful brain took that as law, when it was probably just Mom’s way of telling me that I can’t carry a tune.

Brains are persnickety things. They don’t process what they don’t understand or what they can’t fit into their es...