Fabrications about politics and by politicians are so constant, so effortless, that it makes you wonder if they even know they’re fabricating. But still they do.

So what’s the meaning of the title of this little essay? Well, as you’ve probably guessed, it’s about a politician’s story – this one from a long time ago.

Susie M. Sharp was a Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court in the 1970s. She was elected to that position in 1974 (North Carolina elects most judges, hence making Sharp a politician, as well as a lawyer and judge) and retired from the court in 1979.

Sharp was born in 1907, so she deserves respect as a woman who went to law school and practiced law at a time when there were few women in the field. And in 1949, Sharp was appointed to a judicial position by the NC governor.

So here’s where the story gets interesting. One of Sharp’s duties as judge was to preside in courts in several counties throughout the state. And for many years the story’s been told about her courtroom in Burke county, in western North Carolina. There, she went to her chambers, which were equipped with an adjoining restroom.

The problem was that the restroom consisted of only a sink, and a men’s urinal. No toilet. Sharp, we are told, ordered county officials to modify the restroom so that she and other women judges could use the restroom.

They refused. She in turn called the county sheriff, and ordered him to gather the county commissioners to the courthouse, where she in turn ordered them to get the necessary modifications completed. And these were completed that very day.

Or so we are told. Am I the only one who finds this little mortality tale preposterous?

Because no one makes a public restroom like this. If anything, a restroom might be done with only a toilet. But it’s never done with only a urinal. Never. Even when the builder thinks that only men will ever use the facility.

And the notion that a judge could give an order like this: first, to the sheriff, then to the commissioners in this manner is simply not a believable story. A judge does not have that kind of power, and the idea that a judge who was a woman would have done that in 1949 or 1950 is simply not plausible. And the speed at which this was supposedly completed only adds to the unbelievability level.

What’s worse: there’s no source for this. If there were, I’d be inclined to listen, implausible as it is.

But there is no source. Sharp’s Wikipedia page tells the story, but it is unattributed. The North Carolina Judicial department has no information about this. Neither does the library of the NC Supreme Court. Nor the Burke county records. Nor the Burke county sheriff’s department.

Sharp herself is apparently the one who related this story. And don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying this couldn’t have happened.

What I am saying is that this story has no backup. No sources. And it’s the sort of event that normally would have records. That’s what government bureaucracies do.

I suspect that there was some pushback against Judge Sharp there. Probably nothing more than the normal kind of stupid pushback that would have occurred at that time by men who were not used to dealing with women in a position like that. But that sort of thing comes with being a pioneer. And I suspect that Sharp – who was a complex, sometimes difficult public figure – made the story more interesting when recounting it, and the story took on a life of its own. In other words, there was a kernel of truth to the story, but it’s basically made up.

What’s our takeaway here? When a story is too bad to be true, it’s probably not true. Every career, every life has challenges and twists. But when we are given a story like this, ask yourself about plausibility and whether the story sounds like it could be true. And if it doesn’t sound true, look for evidence. In 2021, the evidence in a major event will be there. And if it’s not there, it probably didn’t happen. You can count on that.