It’s often said: “To assume makes an ass of u and me.”

And it’s true.

I would say that most assumptions are false, and many leave people feeling crammed into a box in somebody else’s cluttered mind.

Michael and I talked about this, and I asked him if there was one assumption people made about him, but he didn’t want to pick one because most of them are wrong.

“There isn’t just one,” he said. “It’s the whole bag of them taken as a whole that gets to me. Most of them really stink, and some are just plain disgusting.”

I agree.

Assumptions about blind people, assumptions about writers, assumptions about lawyers, car salespeople, doctors, and any other person in the world are just not very helpful.

“They’re not helpful at all,” Michael pointed out.

He’s right.

Assumptions make us both angry. We’re trying to write books, be ourselves, live our lives, and everything else in between, and we don’t have the time, the patience, or the energy to deal with assumptions.

Now, questions, those are another thing.

We both love being asked how we do something, what we think, what we believe, and any other kind of question. We just really don’t like that people might think they know something about us without us knowing it ourselves.

We don’t want to be donkeys, corralled and trapped by what other people make us, and we don’t want you to be called an ass, so please treat “u and me” and us with the respect we all deserve and don’t assume.

Instead, ask questions.