If I may, I'd like to take the easy way and respond with the entirety of Chapter 8 from my book titled "The Maniacal Laughter of the Damned: Why you can live and work in the real world without making a deal with the Devil":

Every question has four ingredients: The person asking, the person being asked, the relationship between them, and the motive behind the question. For example, a young man hears, "Why are you getting married?" When posed by his best friend, the question could be suggesting that he's making a mistake because there are "so many women and so little time."

That same question could be coming from a broken heart when it's the little brother who sees his big brother, and best friend, abandoning him and all the fun they had playing ball and video games. It'll mean something else completely when coming from his dad who wishes he'd remained single but "had" to get married after a night at the drive-in spent in the back seat of a '64 Ford. And the question could be expressing great dismay and sadness when coming from his mom who'd always dreamed of her son becoming a priest.

The motive is everything, the truth of it, and especially the perception of it which can be accurate, or completely wrong. Suffice to say you can answer a question neither truthfully nor honestly unless you understand both the question and the motive behind it. If you misunderstand either, your answer might be sincere, honest, and truthful, but still be wrong.

You could, for example, ask me, "Are you Randy?" Unless and until I know whether you're asking me if that's my name (capital "R") or if I'm sexually aroused (small "r") and why you're asking, any answer I give can be right or wrong, truthful or misleading.

I asked a question in the third-grade that foreshadowed what has become, for lack of a better word, my destiny. I asked the teacher why the woman, not the man, changes her name when they get married. The classroom erupted in laughter. I was embarrassed, humiliated. The teacher was great. She said, "Randy, I honestly don't know. All I do know is that it's a tradition."

That question and brief bit of dialogue established forever my relationship with authority figures and my peers. To this moment I respect honesty of character, no patronizing, condescending tones or words. For example, she (the teacher) could've said, "Randy, you're too young to understand." She didn't.

As for my peers, I've had many years to ponder this seemingly innocuous event.

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