← How to Ask an Elder, and Be Asked · Lesson 4 of 4
Keep it honestly
If you write down what you heard, mark each part. Remembered: what they told you. Checked: what you found again somewhere else, like a date on a letter. Cannot know: what nobody alive can tell you now.
Memories change over a lifetime, and that is not lying. Marking them keeps the story true about what it is.
Ask before you share anything you wrote. A story told at a kitchen table belongs to the person who told it.
Your grandfather says the family farm had two hundred cows. A letter from that year mentions forty. How do you write it?
A lesson is kept once you've answered the question and written at least 8 words. Nobody grades it; it stays on this device.