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A LONG, LONG TIME AGO WHEN I was growing up I used to come home from elementary school each day for lunch, and then return for afternoon session. My mother was invariably out marketing, or cleaning and complaining about her back. Grandma was always reading—as I recall, something about Sacco and Vanzetti. Exchanges with my mother were usually based on her ubiquitous and perennial question, "Were you a good boy?" And so, I learned how to lie.
In sharp contrast, my grandmother had only one thing to say at lunchtime, which was, "Did you ask any good questions today?" For years I struggled with not knowing precisely what she meant.
One day I related that the teacher had put six stars on the blackboard in the shape of a pot and had called it The Big Dipper. Then she said there was a smaller group (I doubt that she used the word constellation) called The Little Dipper which she drew as pouring into The Big Dipper. Grandma asked, "And what was your question?" I said, "I asked the teacher whether you could ever see The Big Dipper pouring into The Little Dipper." And, to my amazement, Grandma said, "That was a good question."
The anecdotal method, as romantic and charming as it is, in its reinforcement of hopefulness and its negation of cynicism and despair, is without scientific merit. It is wholly unreliable and usually without a smidgen of validity, as careful investigation ultimately