This started out as one of the major no-no’s for trial lawyers: Do not ask a question you do not already know the answer to or are an answer you are not prepared to hear. I suppose it derived, as so many prudent things do, from the old adage that curiosity killed the cat.

Firemen feel the door before they open it, for instance. I’m not going to give another example; I am going straight to crux of what prompted me to sigh and sit down and whimper onto my laptop. I suspected it, I know, and that is probably why I put off going upstairs and into a certain room. However, because an attachment to my vacuum has been missing for a number of days, I decided to go see if I had left it “in a certain room.”

Up the stairs I went and I turned left and I did not find the attachment; I viewed a room that harbored nothing filthy, but a number of plates and empty cups and glasses – everywhere. I assume it was everywhere because I made a U-Turn and descended the stairs.

A little while later, I heard the door open to the back vestibule and went out to the kitchen to speak with the dinnerware collector. He tilted his head and said, “Well, it’s a work in progress.” That is one thing he has inherited from me – the ability to disguise something distasteful with a euphemism. Why, when I wanted to wash a stuffed animal and make it sound less horrible than saying, “I’m going to put it in the washing machine,” I simply said it was going to a spa. Never mind that the last time I did that in a HE washer, the spin cycle totally flattened the thing against the side and in the end, an eye fell out.

Actually, no one asked me to relay that story and I shouldn’t have, which only goes to show, even if you know the answer to a question – especially one you are not asked – sometimes you just should keep your mouth closed.