Stop That Dog
License to Laugh
Everybody has anxiety about something. Failing an exam, getting laid off, accidentally saying "I love you" to a co-worker as you hang up the phone. Some of us gracefully process that anxiety. Others not so much.
My mom could be the queen of the latter group.
Every 2 months my mom experiences near-debilitating anxiety over her regular visit to a retina specialist. It starts the day before the appointment and slowly crescendos to a DEFCON 1 mental shut down. Honestly, I can't say that I blame her because every visit concludes with her receiving a needle in her eye.
Just writing that gives me the heebie-jeebies.
While sitting in the waiting room last week, my sister and I tried to help my mom lower the DEFCON level on her anxiety by distracting her with funny Instagram videos. Silly things like, horses doing line dances in sync alongside their owner or little kids too young to speak full sentences telling adults they have toxic bad breath. All AI-generated foolishness.
Nothing worked, until I showed her a video of a dog being pulled over by police officer for speeding.
Leo, a Yorkshire Terrier, is riding a little motorcycle, wearing a black leather jacket and matching helmet. When the cop tells him he was clocked doing 38 in a 20, Leo revs the throttle and rolls out. It's a hilariously cute, AI-generated video, but the funniest part was when my mom innocently asked, "How do you know it's AI?"
I don't think I've ever laughed so hard in my life.
Because we were in a public space with several other patients, I spent the next two minutes — literally — doubled over in hernia-inducing silent laughter and tears as I tried to contain the natural guffaw that question generated. I'm still recovering.
My mom is the most technically challenged, gullible, 78-year-old on the planet. Even still, I assumed she'd know that the absence of opposable thumbs would make it impossible for a dog to control a motor vehicle. But then again, Toonces used to drive a car.
Mom is used to my sister and I finding humor in her seemingly clueless responses, especially when technology is involved. As always, she was a good sport and joined in on the laughter, which completely obliterated her anxiety — until the nurse called her name.
If she could have revved the throttle and run away, she would have.
The Thing About Knowing
After laughing at my mom for asking how we knew the video was AI, I realized I couldn't actually explain it — I just knew. It's like when someone says, "We need to talk." You just know it's not gonna be about anything good, so you brace for the worst.
And while that confident, strong understanding that you "just know" something can protect you from trouble, it can also create blindspots.
We've all experienced the expertise trap — the moment we stop asking certain things because we've already filed them under obvious, settled, or beneath us. The longer we've been in a room, the more pre-sorted our thinking becomes. We don't ignore the questions. We just stop being able to see them.
We labor through derailed projects because no one is brave enough to question whether the initial assumptions still hold.
We repeatedly join ineffective, unproductive recurring meetings because we're afraid to ask the simple question, "Do we even still need this meeting?"
The questions don't disappear. We just become too experienced to see them. My mom hadn't.
She had no professional reputation on the line in that waiting room. No expertise to protect. No reason to assume.
Sometimes the smartest person in any room isn't the one with all the answers. It's the one with nothing to prove.
My mom has no idea what the expertise trap is, and that's probably exactly why she avoided it.
She genuinely wanted to know the answer to a question — so she asked.
Such a novel idea.
Question of the Week
What questions has your competence kept you from asking?
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