Right or Wrong, We're All Gonna Die

Dark Check Homing Pigeon

Who cares what you think? And who cares what I think? There are billions of people covering the planet and they all have their own opinions. Is any one of them more valid than another?

Last week I had dinner with a small group of women, all of us former newspaper writers and editors. In conversation I said something about how I would "hone in on" something. One of my dinner companions corrected me, saying that what I meant to say was "home in on." She followed up with an email the next day, explaining "you can hone your skills, meaning sharpen them, but you home in on something (think of a homing pigeon--that's what it's from)." Fine, that was her opinion, I thought. I kept mine to myself. I did it again when she corrected me about Google, which I recalled as a completely made-up word the first time I heard it while she said it was already a real word, obviously confusing it with "googol," which means 10 to the 100th power, whatever that is. Still, she was sure of herself and I was not.

Then this morning, my husband, a former Editor-in-Chief of several serious publications for about 20 years, recounting an anecdote used the term "hone in on." I asked him about it. He validated my opinion. Aha -- vindication! But you know what? Who cares. My life is unchanged whether I was right or wrong. And yes, here I am writing about being right. Still, my days are numbered either way.