If you package a lie as a story, it becomes infinitely more believable

When I was in 3rd or 4th grade, my tuition teacher told us something that I believed for the longest time.

We were learning history, some chapter about inventors and inventions - the steam engine, the television, the telephone, etc. If you went to an SSC school you'd probably know what I'm talking about.

When it came to the telephone, my teacher brought up an anecdote. She asked us, "Do you know why we say hello when pick up the phone?" We were all kids, and none of us could even form a proper sentence in English, let alone the reason for why we said hello.

My tuition teacher was a catholic lady, probably in 60s. She had all the credibility in the world to tell us anything she wanted and none of us dare question.

She told us that "Hello" was Graham Bell's wife and while they were testing the telephone together, "Hello" was the first word that he spoke. That's how it stuck, and that's the reason we still say it today.

Now this made complete sense to my 8 yo brain. So much so, that over the years I peddled the same lie to countless other people, just so they knew how smart I was.

I didn't really have much access to the internet back then, so there was no chance I would ever fact-check it.

Many years later, I came across the Spanish word for hello - hola. I knew that Spanish is older than English and a lot of English words are actually derived from Spanish. I had a complete light-bulb moment and went straight to Google.

I confirmed that while Hello and Hola mean the same things, they have completely different roots. The English word is actually and evolution of the Old English word - Hallo. An in fact there was no woman named Hello. Graham Bell's wife was called Mabel Habbard. And it was in fact Thomas Edison that popularized the greeting that we used today.

I also found our that my tuition teacher's lie wasn't all made up. This is actually a very common story that has been going around for years. Read this article from 2014.

Why this story today? i'm down with fever as I'm writing this and I have done nothing but watch YT Shorts all day. One of those was a video about Edison vs Tesla and how Edison was the "evil" one, and reminded me of this story.

Well, anyways...

The larger learning here is how misinformation spreads through believable stories, and why it's important to question things, even when they make perfect sense at first.

If you have a similar story, please share, I'd love to hear it!