Is it OK to repeat someone else’s story if you’re not sure it’s true?
There’s an old story about Ernest Hemingway accepting a bet that he couldn’t write a short story in six words. The story goes that Hemingway responded by writing: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” It had all that was necessary for a moving tale suggesting loss and grief. It’s been held up as an example of Hemingway’s writing prowess even with a paucity of words.
The problem is that it’s highly unlikely Hemingway ever accepted such a bet or originated the words, a version of which appeared in 1906, when Hemingway was 7 years old. Nevertheless, it makes for a good story and still gets wrongly attributed.
I was reminded of the baby shoes story when I was contemplating writing a column about a story that I recollect my best friend telling me in the early 1990s, when he was furniture shopping for his studio apartment in Manhattan. As I recalled it, Jim told me that he purchased a small cabinet that he carried several blocks from the store to his apartment. When he got the cabinet into place and opened one of the drawers, he told me that it was full of stuffed animals. What I couldn’t remember was what Jim decided to do with the animals that were erroneously included with his purchase.
I can’t double-check with Hemingway to see if he made up the story about writing about baby shoes since he died in 1961. But I could check in with Jim, who is alive and well and now living outside Los Angeles.
I called Jim to ask him two questions. The first was whether the story actually happened or if it was a yarn he spun as he was settling into life in Manhattan. If it did indeed happen, I wanted to know what he did with the stuffed animals. That second answer could lead to a column about what to do when you find yourself being given more than you paid for.
Jim couldn’t recollect telling me the story. He did, however, remember all of the furniture he bought and carried home to his studio apartment, assuring me that the apartment wasn’t big enough to hold much. “I’m pretty sure that never happened,” he told me of the stuffed animals. We then figured it made for a good story about his adventure and he made it up.
That the story stuck with me is anecdotal proof that an incidental comment we make to someone might have more sticking power than we intend. Both Jim and I had experienced such yarn-spinning with old high school friends. We were both present when a mutual friend recalled something that happened to them in high school that actually had happened to one of us. This mutual friend presumably forgot that we were all there and knew the truth.
I could have written a column based on Jim’s anecdote. But checking with those who tell us stuff before we spread that stuff to others is the right thing to do. So too is returning stuff we didn’t pay for.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com.
Follow him on Twitter @jseglin.
(c) 2025 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
No comments:
Post a Comment