When I was about 10 or 11, my mother ordered a set of children’s classic books for me. They were flipover books, you’d read one book, like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer then you’d flip it over and there was The Adventures of Huckelberry Finn on the other side.

And that’s where I discovered Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass. I was familiar with the story, of course. We had a vinyl record of someone reading an abridged version and we had a Golden Book with illustrations from the Disney movie.

I was in seventh grade when I read the original Lewis Carroll version of Alice in Wonderland and I was blown away by the absurdity of it all. I was especially fond of the Cheshire Cat. All through high school I had a psychedelic poster in my bedroom that said “We’re all mad.”

The proper context of that quote is:

“But I don’t want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.

"Oh, you can’t help that," said the Cat: "we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad."

"How do you know I’m mad?" said Alice.

"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn’t have come here.”

“We’re all mad here,” has been my guiding philosophy of life since 1968.

But as we all know, the internet loves attributing quotes to people who never said them. Casual net surfers see them, assume they're accurate and share it. Or maybe they don’t care whether it’s accurate or not, they just like the sound of it. So it spreads.

Since the Tenniel illustrations are in the public domain, it’s possible to use his iconic pictures of the Mad Hatter or the Cheshire Cat with a quote that’s not in the book and pass it off as genuine.

Here's one that's popped up a lot. “I'm not crazy, my reality is different from yours.”

I suppose that gets us into that wonderful old Jefferson Airplane song “White Rabbit.”

“When logic and proportion have fallen, sloppy dead…” Definitely a different reality. albeit temporary until the drugs wear off.

But that's not in the book either.

By the way, Grace Slick now says the line “Feed your head,” means go home and read a book. Sage advice for us all.

You can buy a framed poster with the phrase “‘The secret, Alice, is to surround yourself with people who make your heart smile. It’s then, only then, that you’ll find Wonderland’...The Mad Hatter.’”

That one infuriates me no end. In the book, the Mad Hatter is not at all concerned with making Alice’s heart smile. He’s actually quite rude. When Alice approaches the table, the Hatter (along with the March Hare) yells out “NO ROOM!” even though the table is set for a great many guests. Then he says “Your hair wants cutting.”

Finally, they get into an argument about whether you can or can’t have more than nothing.

She leaves in a huff, without, we assume, a “smiling heart.”

The Internet was supposed to bring us together and make us more knowledgeable. And it has to some extent. But it's also made us lazy and stupid, in that so many of us believe whatever pops up in our Facebook feed.

For example, Dr. Sues is supposed to have said “Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.”

I hate this bit of drivel. There are many things in life that are terribly painful when they end and smiling is something you just can’t do. In those situations, if someone tells you to “smile because it happened,” you have my permission to slap them.

Or at least tell them to STFU.

In case you're interested in the origin of the smile quote, there's a wonderful post about it on Alexander Atkins Book Shelf blog.

https//atkinsbookshelf.wordpress.com/2018/04...

Or you could go ask Alice.

I think she'll know.